It seems as though this blog is something I pick up and put back down for long intervals.
When I wasn’t writing or coding/analyzing/mapping data this summer, I spent a lot of time in the garden. Gardening is one activity that I can engage as I “turn off” my brain. The senses are more important than my academic understandings of plants. I can speculate on the type of nutrient deficiency my tomato plants have, or I can fortify the soil and move on. It’s also good exercise!
This year, I grew:
- beans (4 types – green beans, burgundy beans, red swan beans, and red long beans)
- tomatoes (5 types – cherry tomatoes, black cherry tomatoes, green zebra tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, and brandywine tomatoes)
- leeks
- onions
- potatoes (the ones in the compost count, right?)
- sunflowers
- okra
- watermelon
- peppers (4 types – orange bell peppers, ancho chiles, grand marconi, jalapenos)
- kale (3 types – blue, Lacinto, Russian)
- herbs (basil, thyme, sage, parsley, chives, garlic chives)
- eggplant
- cucumbers
- Swiss chard
- strawberries
- squash (acorn, crookneck, and one odd cross-pollinated squash
Now the Fall semester is 6 days away and I haven’t even bought the books for my classes! I honestly thought I had one more week of Summer, but then I checked the calendar.
I can’t be mad, though. I set goals for myself and reached them. It feels good once I get past my frustration about the process taking longer than planned. It feels darn good to send a full draft to my advisor after months of data cleanup and analysis. And it feels good to make progress on coding qualitative data after months of data collection. Slow and steady is the nature of this researcher life, it seems.
Arrianna Planey's Blog 