The Cat's Out Of The Bag - Off To Nursing School We Go!

Yep, that's right! The choice has been made, and it's off to nursing school for me! Yippee!

I always hear about how hard it is to get into nursing school, so I was ready for a letter of rejection for my application. Lo and behold, I got in!!! It's amazing!

But I took a long time to think it over. A career change is a big thing, and FOUR MORE YEARS OF SCHOOL is, well, it's quite daunting. Plus, I rather like my new job as an animator and I like the group I'm working in. It's really too bad that I have to leave.

I told my workplace on Friday, about a month in advance. They were really nice and said I could come back if I ever changed my mind. They were hoping to renew my contract because they said my team really liked me and they were happy with my quality of work. (That's very nice of them to say, huh?) I will miss them very much when I'm gone.

But I've made many new friends there, and I hope they'll stick around because I like them. Meanwhile, I have to start registering for classes and buying school supplies. I even have to buy a nurse's uniform! My school colours for that are evergreen with a pale, dusty green trim. I could opt for the reverse colour combination, but I think the darker green will be more practical. For some reason, I feel giddy to think that I have to wear a nurse's uniform soon. It seems awfully fun!

So it seems I have finally reached the crossroads. I had been avoiding it for so long. Coincidentally, I kept meeting random people on the bus and skytrains that just happened to be nurses - go figure. My co-workers encouraged me to pursue the nursing path too as they felt it would be a "real job". It's funny, isn't being an animator a real job too?

So I'm pretty nervous stepping back into the shoes of a student so I can grow into the shoes of a nurse. Will I like it? Will I hate it? I don't really know yet. My friend who is also going into nursing this year knows exactly what she wants, and she's so sure of her chosen path. It makes me feel abnormal to be so hesitant, but I know that I want to to try becoming a nurse and that I would make a good one. I fear that I will suck at it, but I know that I'll be okay.

My main worries are that I'll become calloused from dealing with death and suffering daily, and that I won't care as much as I do now about all the little things in life. With certainty, I'll grow a tougher skin and grow up a lot. One thing that I hope for is to learn skills to be able to save lives and help people. I think it would be meaningful to make a difference in people's lives everyday.

Anyhow, I thought I would update you on what's happening since I haven't said a peep for a while about this. Are any big changes going on in your life? Let me know!

Take care,
Marie

How To Propagate Tomatoes Or How to Save Tomato Plants With Blight

This year I lost two tomato plants to a mysterious disease that turned the lower plant stems black. The blackened section dies and the rest of the plant above the damaged portion dies too because it cannot get water. I went ahead and bought new tomato plants, but one of them that was planted into the same location also began to turn black.

I wasn't sure at the time what was turning my tomato stems black, but I have figured out a way to save the tomato plants from dying. The tomato plant above the damaged section is basically alive and well, so the trick is to give the upper portion an ability to obtain it's own water supply.

You will notice that, just above the damaged section, the stem is very bumpy. The tomato plant actually WANTS to grow roots to get water.

Here's what I did:

1. Take a sheet of plastic and put some good quality soil in the middle.
2. Tie the two corners of one side of the sheet together. Do the same with the other side. Now you have a pouch with soil inside.
3. Take this soil pouch and wrap it around the stem under a leaf joint so that the soil is touching the stem. In the case of blight, this will be the good section above the black part.
4. Take the loose corners of the two pouch sides and tie them together.
5. Get help! Have someone hold the soil bandage up.
6. Support the soil bandage. Use string or long twist ties to support the soil bandage by tying it to the leaf joint. You can also prop a piece of wood or another object under the soil bandage to hold it up. Be careful not to pull your plant over if your plant is unable to hold up the weight of the soil bandage.

Honestly, it looks like crap. It's a giant ball of soil wrapped around a stem of tomato plant.

But look at what happens after a couple weeks. Since the tomato plant wants water so badly, it starts to grow A LOT of roots really fast. They even grow out of the damaged black portions!

Once your soil bandage looks like there are lots of healthy white roots growing into it, you can cut off the stem under your soil ball. Put it down and carefully remove the plastic wrapping by cutting it open. If your plant has black stem, be sure to cut away all the black portions.

Now you can plant your rescued tomato plant into a new location.

What is the black stuff?

I looked this up and it appears to be a fungal infection called Blight or Late Blight. The spores are found in infected soil and they splash up onto the plant stems when you water your plants.

This is probably how the lower parts of the stems got affected on my plants and why I am able to save the upper portions. Infected plants can be purchased from big stores like Home Depot or Walmart, and the disease spreads easily there because the plants are in such close proximity. It's moist there, there's not much air flow, and that means good conditions for fungal infections to spread.

I suspect that some of the early tomato plants that died were infected plants. After they died, the spores sat in the soil, and they splashed up onto the new tomato plant and infected it too.

You're actually supposed to destroy infected plants. You're not even supposed to compost them. However, I don't really want to destroy my tomato plants, and I don't mind a good experiment (as you know). So this will be an interesting test to see if the newly propagated tomato plants will live and produce good fruit.

If you live near farms or areas where your infected plants could affect someone else's crop, you should probably get rid of your plants. Since mine are isolated and in the city, I don't have that issue.

Can I eat tomatoes infested with Blight?

You can eat tomatoes from blight-infected plants. It's okay. However, a really badly infested plant will produce hideous tomatoes with ugly black spots on them. I'm not sure if mine will be okay yet. We'll see.

What causes Blight? How can I avoid it?

Blight spreads easily in cold, wet weather which we had earlier in the season, but it is slowed down by hot, dry weather which we have now.

You can discourage/avoid blight in your garden by giving tomato plants a lot of breathing room. In fact, you can even trim tomato plants that have too many leaves and look overly dense. Just cut off some extra stems/leaves that look weak or don't seem to have a useful purpose. Don't get the foilage wet when you water the soil (so spores don't splash up on the stem and leaves). And ensure that leaves have a chance to fully dry out each day.

You can also avoid it by buying blight-resistant plants.

Blight can also affect potatoes. It was actually responsible for the Irish potato famine of the 1840's. So be careful if you have infected tomatos near potato plants.

Well, I hope that helps you out with your tomato growing. I love eating tomatoes fresh from my garden, and they taste so much better than store-bought ones!

Happy Gardening!

How To Propagate Petunias From Cuttings

Petunias are an essential addition to hanging baskets. Their bright colours and ease-of-care also make them great for any gardener to brighten up their flowerbeds.

The best news is that they are also easy to propagate.
Here is how to propagate your petunias to make more of a wonderful flowering plant.
You will need the following supplies:

1. good quality soil
2. a pot with good drainage
   
3. a dibber/pencil/or thin spoon handle
4. scissors
5. healthy, well-watered petunia plants
6. a container of water
   

Snip off a stem from a petunia plant. Be sure to cut under a leaf joint, and ensure that there are at least 3 leaf joints on the stem.
Keep your cuttings fresh by putting them immediately into a container of water while you work.
Snip off the lower leaves on the cuttings. Also remove any flowers since you want the cuttings to focus their energy on growing roots first.
Fill your pot with soil. (Tip: The rule of thumb is to fill the container until it is heaping, and then to gently press the soil down into the container. It should fill up fairly perfectly.)

Use your dibber to make some deep holes in your container of soil.
Place one cutting per hole.
Use your dibber to push soil towards the plant stem so that the holes are filled.
Water generously to really soak the soil and stems. This also helps the soil to settle around the cuttings.
Place the cuttings in a bright location with filtered light. Bright and shady is good too. Do not expose them to direct sunlight or overly hot and dry conditions. (Use an umbrella if necessary to create shade.)

These cuttings do not have roots yet so they dry out very easily. Keep the plants well watered, soaking the leaves as well as the soil daily. On hot days, I soak them in the morning and again in the late afternoon. On cooler days, I only soak them in the evening.

The cuttings will be a little limp, but they should never be totally shriveled up. If they totally shrivel up, it is probably because you didn't water them enough or the location is too hot.
About 2-3 weeks later, the cuttings will start to perk up. This is a sign that roots are starting to grow out and the cuttings are starting to be able to take up water from the soil.

I am impatient so I usually gently ease one out to have a peek. Dip it into water to rinse off the soil to check if there are roots forming. Be very gently when you put the cutting back into the soil and water it well to ensure that the soil is all around the stem again.
If there are no roots, put the cuttings back into the soil and wait patiently for another week. As long as the cutting hasn't died, it will eventually put roots down. Some cuttings just take longer than others.

If there are little roots forming, that is excellent. Put the cutting back into the soil and let it grow for another week. By this time, the cuttings should look pretty good and have some decent root growth. Feel free to gently plant them into a new location in your garden or hanging basket.

Always water well for the first couple days after you plant them into a new location so that they have time to adjust to their new, sunnier and drier pots and gardens.

Happy Gardening!

Latest Treasury Features

I've been honoured to be featured in two recent treasuries! (Better pictures really do make a difference, huh?)
The first one is called "CLICK HERE" and it features my recycled black and white paper butterflies.
The second is called "Perfect Moment" and it features my black and white cardstock paper butterflies.

Thanks so much for featuring me, Annalela!

Other than good pictures, what else do you think makes an item more likely to be featured? What are some of your top-featured items?

The Fish House - Restaurant Review

Ever since The Cannery closed down, V. has been asking for Salmon Wellington. Fortunately, some favourites from The Cannery menu were passed on to The Fish House at Stanley Park.
The Fish House is not as impressive looking as The Cannery, but it has a certain green and white historic home charm to it. It looks out onto a mini golf course and some nice green lawns and trees, and you can see the shore and water in the distance. Not-so-impressive is the tennis course beside it. It's okay, but it's no Wimbledon :P
We ordered one of our favourites from The Cannery - the sizzling cast iron mussels. We've been drooling about this for months now. The cast iron skillet is more shallow than the one we were used to so there was less juice, but the mussels still tasted good. The chorizo sausage had the same tangy goodness we were hoping for, but they were coated with coarse salt. Mind you, salty can be pretty tasty, so we just ordered some extra bread and had at 'er.
If I could improve it, I would have more juice on the bottom like I remember, and I would have the chorizo sausage better cut up and spread throughout. The chorizo sausage in our mussel order was cut, but still connected together. And while I liked it salty, I think it was actually too salty. Without the extra bread, it would have been too much.
V. got the salmon wellington and declared that it was just as good as he had remembered. Good job, The Fish House!
I decided to try something different and went with the salmon bake. As you can see, it looked wonderful. A nicely grilled salmon sits atop of a bed of creamy cheesy spinach, and slices of golden potato. There's a wedge of yellow beet, which is quite good, asparagus stems, and kale.

Now, I went to The Fish House a long time ago and I distinctly remember delicious kale that was stir fried lightly with oil and salt. It was the first time I had eaten kale and I loved how green the kale was, lightly tossed in oil, and how the salt gave it a bit of bite.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case this time. The kale is probably more healthy, but it's bland. It's blanched or boiled, rather flavourless, and definitely doesn't look slightly shiny with oil. It's also less dark green. I ate a few leaves and left the rest.
Now, before I begin on the dessert portion, I should mention that they messed up my main course. The salmon bake comes as pink salmon by default, but I had upgraded to the sockeye salmon option when I made my order. However, the pink salmon arrived anyways. I pointed this out to the waiter and he attempted to change the salmon for me, but I really didn't want to wait for a new salmon to be made so I told him to just let it be. He assured me that he would change my bill so that I wouldn't be charged for the salmon upgrade, and he promised to treat us to some dessert on the house.
I ordered the rhubarb and berry crumble and asked for a small side of raspberry sorbet. He did me better and brought two raspberry sorbets instead of one, and added two bite-sized truffles with strawberries. Good man!The rhubarb and berry crumble was warm and toasty. It was pretty good except that V. ate all the topping and left all the rhubarb :P After that, it just didn't look good any more.

This dessert is not very heavy. The scoop you see is actually whipped cream, and the dish is very shallow.
I'm a huge fan of raspberry sorbet, and this dessert definitely arrives with style. I love the icing sugar dusted mint leaf, which gives a hint of flavour to the sorbet, and the simple cinnamon biscotti on the side is pretty, crisp, and good. The sorbet itself, however, doesn't live up to my standards. I would describe it as having too much gelatin in the recipe. So while the flavour is okay (I would actually like it a bit more tart), the texture is too much like frozen jello.

I don't really get it, but V. complained that it was too cold. In general, he's not a big fan of sorbet, so I didn't expect him to like it.
These little bite-sized truffles were a bonus. They look pretty enough with the tiny strawberries and mint leaf, but I didn't find them particularly delicious. V. liked them and made good work of them, but I found them a bit too waxy in flavour and texture. I would have preferred them a tad bit more rich and flavourful considering how tiny they are, and I honestly just didn't know what kind of flavour to expect from them. Whatever ideas I might have had were unfulfilled. Creamy would have also been a more desirable texture for these truffles.
In terms of service, it was horrible. We sat in a corner and the waiter and his assistant magically passed from the couple in front of us to the couple beside us without giving us a glance. We would wave our hands to catch his attention, but he would seem too immersed in his conversation with the other couples to even acknowledge that he had seen us. Considering that he walked away immediately following his conversation with the other couple he actually DIDN'T see us, but that's even worse because it would imply truly horrible peripheral vision. Sometimes I wondered if he was purposely ignoring us because it seemed impossible that he could never see us waving at him or calling for him. His assistant was more receptive, but he was usually completely involved in setting up tables and laying down cutlery with very acute attention to detail.

It took a very long time before we were able to notify the waiter that my salmon had been messed up, by which time I had eaten almost half of my dish. It was the assistant that finally noticed us trying to get his attention, and he must have taken a while to let our waiter know because our waiter didn't come over to address the issue until I finished even more of my fish. V. was not impressed.

After they had messed up my order, they began to pay more attention to our table. The waiter apologized for the mess up, blaming it on the computer. He also apologized for the lack of service, blaming the assistant for being not up to par. His attempt to make up for the errors with complimentary desserts and lots of apologies was appreciated, but I really wish that the service had been better right off the bat because the food itself was really good. If service had been better, I would have overlooked the exterior of the restaurant and declared it my new favourite. As is, I think I prefer Raincity Grill more.

What about you? Would you eat here? What factors affect your decisions in choosing a restaurant?

Ninja Love

Okay, this is seriously cool. I love ninjas... but to be part of a ninja treasury really takes the cake.
Celebrate with me, and get 10% off on your next order from my shop! Just write "ninja" in the notes to seller and I'll refund 10% via Paypal.

Have a ninja-happy day!