It has been quite a while since my last blog. I have been crazy busy between both my jobs, recently moving, planting a garden, and being a preceptor. Not to mention the impromptu summer mini vacations. Nonetheless, I am back in action :)
About 2 months ago, I was asked to be a preceptor to a distance intern for their community rotation. I am sympathetic when it comes to distance interning (I was one myself). I remember just how hard it was to find all of my preceptors! I must say, it was definitely weird to be the one doing the teaching. The first couple of days with my intern were odd purely because I was not used to someone following me around all day! It was cool sharing my knowledge and experience with someone who has the same passion as me. It was definitely helpful to have a second pair of hands when I was working with a group of young children too! I would suggest to anyone to become a preceptor if your job allows. I felt it was a learning experience for me as much as them!
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| Post digging out |
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| 3 weeks after planting |
My biggest project since my boyfriend and I moved into our duplex was my garden (or should I say gardens). One, I am no garden expert. Two, I learned plenty of things I should and shouldn't do. Three, things taste wayyyyyy better when you grow them yourselves! Four, don't try and attack your overgrown, new yard with a tank top on or you will become a vesicle for bugs and itching.
I never had my own yard space until now. My dad always had a garden in our yard growing up; however, it was never something I really worked on. Our yard with quite overgrown when we moved in, so it took about a week or so to pull weeds and get the dirt ready for planting. The lady that lived in the house years back had put down some bricks around plots of land. It made for great sectioning of my garden:) I ended up with 3 plots for vegetables and a 4th for a butterfly bush. We also had an overgrowth of mint in the yard, which was super fun pulling out (not). A few things about mint: never ever plant in the ground unless you want it to take over your yard and be prepared to muscle out the roots if you try and pull it out!
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| Tomatoes, peppers, etc |
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| Tomatoes, peppers, parsley |
I ended up planting one plot with cucumbers, carrots, kale, spinach, and lettuce. I trim the kale, spinach, and lettuce every other day. I love fresh garden salads! The cucumbers I am still waiting to grow an actual cucumber and not a thousand more leaves and flowers. My other plot has tomatoes, peppers, and parsley. I got about 4 peppers so far and 50 tomatoes, all of which are still green. The 3rd plot has parsley I started from a seed, basil, peas, and another tomato plant I just moved out of a pot. I also have aloe, hot peppers, and a weird cactus looking plant in pots along the edge of my garden.
Having a garden is hard work between prepping the soil, planting, weeding (almost every day), and watering. Despite all that (plus the poison oak/sumac I got on my arms), I absolutely love it. Someone said to me that gardening was therapeutic and I totally believe that! I can spend hours outside and I wouldn't even care. You wouldn't believe how excited I was when my first leaves poked out of the ground, or my first green tomato sprouted. It is like my little baby!
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First pepper
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| First tomatoes |
It definitely makes you appreciate the food you eat when you grow it yourself. And if you were wondering. After I got poison oak/sumac, I went outside with pictures of all the poisons, found the tree/bush with both sumac and oak twisted around each other and hacked it apart. Take that!
Stay tuned for my new "What I ate Wednesday" posts, inspired by fellow dietitian, and "Fresh Fridays" post with my garden updates!
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