Mushrooms never get boring, right?

Once more into the woods!

We ventured out again yesterday in search of tasty fungus, but I'm a little lower on photographic evidence. A combination of rough hiking (lots of blow downs in our way, and I'm not the most graceful of people even on flat surfaces), cold (numb fingers!), and rain (generally bad for cameras) meant that I really only took pictures before and after our trek.


And what am I going to take pictures of? Why, the cutest thing around, of course. In fact, she was so cute I completely forgot to take photos of the amazing mushrooms we gathered. I think our final estimate was around 8lbs, and while it was mostly chanterelles there were a couple chicken of the woods and lobster mushrooms in there too. Yum.

Aside from wild edible gathering I've been busy studying my butt off for school. The assigned reading this term is intense, and I'm still having a tough time adjusting. My brain seems to want to stay on vacation, so I'll read 10 pages of anesthesiology and then suddenly wonder what in the world it said. Good job, brain. Thanks.

Mushrooms

Well, we had a highly successful outing yesterday! I found and picked my very first chanterelles, and we ended up coming home with two basketfulls of the yummy fungus. BP cooked some up for pasta (with thyme, pepper, blue cheese and tomatoes...mmmm) and the rest will be frozen and saved for eventual chanterelle pizza. My mouth is watering just thinking of it!

And of course we had the Kitty Bunny with us. She was a real trooper - smiling and giggling and just generally enjoying being outdoors. We were taking shifts staying on the logging road with her while the other two people went into the woods to hunt, and my turn just happened to land when she was ready for a nap.

It's a tough job, I'm telling you....but I took one for the team! Can't you just feel those nap waves rolling off of her? Dangerous stuff.

Anyway, not having class on Tuesdays this term means (hopefully) more of this sort of fun in my future. Hard to beat tromping around the woods on a beautiful day, snuggling the world's most adorable baby, and gathering yummy food.

Procrasti-Kate

I could argue that I've been too busy studying to post, but really, I just haven't bothered. Sorry!

Finals are almost upon me again, and I've been feeling the study pressure. This term has been far less demanding than the previous two, but that doesn't tend to make finals week any less painful. Tomorrow I will be drawing a slip of paper from a hat, and this slip of paper will tell me what vein I have to poke, and on which animal. I'm praying for anything but cat cephalics, but expecting the worst.

In other news, I've been spending more time in the garden. This is the first time I've had a patch of dirt to call my own, and the sheer possibilities involved with planning what I will grow has me giddy. I'm limited by funds (hooray for Bi-Mart's sale rack!) and lack of proper soil nutrients, but I've still managed to create something that makes me happy.


I know most people consider eating your own produce to be the height of gardening, but while that certainly gives me a thrill, I can't find anything more satisfying than seeing my flowers blooming and growing to form a patchwork of colour. Yes, my snow peas were delicious, but I've put far more effort and attention into my clematis and irises, just because they're pretty. Can't help it!

There is still so much I want to do with it, but this is a good start. Hopefully by next year I'll have managed to fill in the bare patches.

So, photos!

I am addicted to snapdragons.

This iris had bloomed once already, but as you can see from the sheered off stem, someone stole the flower the day after it bloomed. This is the one remaining flower, and I am highly protective of it.
One of the roses that was here when I moved in. My nextdoor neighbour tells me it was rescued from the garbage bin at the grocery store by the tenant who lived here 15 years ago. Nice to see something so pretty get a second chance.

Tell me, how does your garden grow?

No silver bells or cockleshells, but I'm pretty pleased with how things are looking outside my door anyway.

When I moved into this apartment, there was a rather ugly patch of dirt next to my little patio that looked as though it had been intended to contain plants. There were sad little rose bushes in it that looked like they had given up trying to fill the space, and if anything they really just made the whole thing look more pathetic, not less.
I have no really good pictures of the spot, simply because I saw no reason to photograph the ugliness. I wish had now, just so I'd have a better sense of before and after, but it's a little late!



It's still quite sparse, but I'm much happier with how it looks anyway. I'm especially pleased with the daffodils I put in...they turned out beautifully!

Garden + Camera =

I have a macro setting on my camera. I also have plants in bloom. That's really all there is to this post.

Tired

Between personal drama, midterms, pending finals, daily duties, and a mild case of the plague (ok, maybe it's just a cold), I've been pretty wiped out recently. I'm thoroughly looking forward to bit of a break once finals are done, especially since it looks like I might actually get to go home for a visit (thanks Mom!!). All I have to do is make it through:
- 1 nursing and restraint practical exam
- 1 parasitology quiz
- 1 math assignment
- 1 A&P lab practical
- 2 more daily duties shifts
- 4 written final exams

I'm actually very excited about this week because it marks my last ever A&P lab. You have no idea how heartily sick I am of those cat cadavers now (remember when I found them exciting? ugh!). It also marks the last time I will have to open my PhysioEX book (a particularly vile lab supplement). We're planning a bonfire composed of PhysioEX books once we're done finals, partly for the enjoyment factor, and partly because I think a lot of us truly believe, on some deeper level, that fire is the only way to cleanse the earth of this despicable presence. I know, I know - book burning isn't usually high up on my list of to-do items, but this time I'm all over it.

In other news, my poor little pea seedlings appear to be doomed. They were becoming dangerously rootbound in their starter trays and I finally bit the bullet and put them outside, hoping that they might have some small chance of survival. This is what they had to contend with today:

Yup, snow. They were looking decidedly wilted when I got home.

By the way, doesn't Dave look happy in the snow? He should. He'd spent the 20 minutes prior to this photo being a complete butthead and refusing to budge an inch from his chosen spot outside the barn door. Since I was the one who had led him there in an attempt to give him his daily walk, I got to stand there with him, in the snow, waiting for him to decide to go back to his stall. Gotta love Dave.

Jack Frost - no longer welcome!

These are the seedlings I started 2 weeks ago, anticipating a distinct lack of outdoor frostiness in the near future. This hasn't happened yet and the sweet-peas are waging a war on my kitchen. I'm nervous that the nasturtiums are going for a coup as well. Why did I choose climbers for my first seedlings of the year??


In other news, I survived the flu bug, though it was not a pleasant experience, to say the least. So far 3 students and one instructor have caught it (and one student's disabled son...poor lady!) and several others are feeling like they might be next. From what I've been reading on the Portland forums I visit, the whole city is spreading it around and people are just dropping like flies. Not fun!

Had my first practical exam in nursing and restraint yesterday, and it wasn't my best showing ever. Part of my problem was nerves (when the head of the program is watching you do something, you kinda want to get it right!), part of it was not having consumed anything but water and crackers for 24 hours, and part of it was the lack of instructional time our lab group has had due to being snowed out one day. We're so far behind that there were items on the practical that we hadn't even covered in lab yet, let alone had time to practice. Dr. H graded accordingly (ie, when I chose an injection site on poor Bryn that would have gone right through her sciatic nerve, she only marked me down half points, not full), but it was still frustrating. I know I failed a few portions (the otoscope looked like it was put together right, but darned if I could get it to turn on....) and rocked a couple others (all the ones in front of the head of the program, booyah!).

On an interesting note, I caught this cool shot of Minnow that made me think she might have a deficient tapetum lucidum in her right eye. This isn't the first picture I've taken of her like this, but it's the first time I've really thought about it (go A&P!)

The "red-eye" effect that humans get in photos is a result of light reflecting off the red capillaries in our retinas. Cats (and many other species) have a shiny coating over their retinas called the tapetum lucidum which helps to reflect light more strongly, thereby allowing them to see better in the dark. Light reflects off this in several different colours depending on species, but some animals will have deficient tapetum lucidums causing a red-eye effect in photos. A lot of siamese cats are genetically prone to this, and I just found an article on taurine deficiency in pregnant females potentially leading to it in kittens. It doesn't really mean much, especially since Minnow doesn't go outside, but it made me curious.

However, upon further study....


It would appear she is perfectly normal. Well....no, not really. But her eyes are anyway.


(yes, I know she's getting chubby. In my defence, that isn't actually a belly on her, it's the loose tissue from her stump)