Time for a change...

When I got pregnant I really thought I could finish the PhD.  I only would have two year left and only two classes, so most of that time would be research and writing - shouldn't be a problem, right?  Well that plan hinged heavily on me being able to have Eb with me most of the time.  I knew I couldn't have him in the lab because of policy and chemicals, but I thought I could have him in the field with me.  Over the last few weeks it has become apparent that isn't technically allowed, and my adviser is not okay with it.  

So a cross road presented itself to us.  Start pumping and seek 'alternative care' for Ebenezer so I can spend the amount of time I would need to in the field and Chris can do his internship or... quit.  It wasn't quite that straight forward at first, but that is what it came down to.  

Chris and I have always felt passionately that it is our responsibility from God to train and raise our children - personally.  We don't feel like we can fulfill that responsibility by placing our children under the care and authority of others.  So daycare was out of the question, even if we could afford it.  Chris needs to continue on to his internship if he is to graduate in a timely manner, so he would not be available for the amount of time I would need to be occupied.

So, we decided it was time to quit.

This isn't as traumatic for me as you might think.  It has actually been an extreme relief.  I have felt torn between the full time responsibility of the PhD and the full time responsibility of being a Mom and wife since I knew I was pregnant.  There has been tension between these two for months and it multiplied exponentially after Eb was born.  I wasn't keeping up with my one class and I wasn't getting the necessities done with the project.  What little I was doing took time away from Eb that I didn't want to give, and the whole aura of the PhD tainted the time I did have with him with stress and guilt.  I was beyond tired of that tension, and quite honestly my loyalties had moved from this program to Ebenezer long before I saw his face.

Some things that have further eased this decision are the conditions I came here under, the assumption I have always tried to have about the PhD and some things that just didn't go as planned with the project.  This was a job to me, not something that I had to, or really wanted to, commit my whole life to.  It was a blessing that God provided a way to provide for us that I found very interesting and gave Chris the time he needed to work on his Masters.  I have always held it loosely while still trying to do an excellent job.  I planned to complete it if nothing better came along - fortunately for me something better has come along! Some things in my project haven't gone as planned which has kept me from being as endeared to it as I could have been - I came on the assumption that I would at least be able to incorporate organic research into this and was never able to.  Additionally, the load continues to get heavier and heavier as my adviser added things that were of interest to her and chucked my interests out the window.  Finally, as you all know, my dream has always been to be a wife and Mom, and Chris and I agreed if the PhD interfered with that, it was disposable.

Now that there is a conflict between the two the time has come to cut our losses and dispose of what isn't necessary - me becoming a doctor.

I had a lot of fear in this decision (Surprised?).  Not for my personal goals or desires, I am thrilled that I finally get my heart's desire!  No my fear involved much more tangible things, anger from my adviser, disapproval and misunderstanding from other and finances.  There was the possibility that I would have to pay back all of the aid I had received so far (well over $60,000 including tuition waivers).  But God has been faithful and tangibly confirmed to us that this is a good path (why am I surprised?)!  Not only will I not have to pay anything back (except loans of course) but I will continue to get paid to the end of term, with less responsibility, my adviser took the news beautifully, so has everyone else, we already have a place lined up to live back in Indiana and Chris found a new internship within a week of calling around!

While I am going to miss the church family and friends we have made here, I am beyond excited to move back to familiar ground and start this new chapter of life!  

Peach Update!

Last year I started part of my project with some mature trees that were already planted at the farm.  The second half of my project requires young trees and we finally got those planted this Fall.  In this part of the study we will be able to compare nitrogen rates and nitrogen application forms (granular versus fertigation), along with leaching potential of the different rates from a very early stage of growth.  We will eventually be able to compare production rates and quality on these trees but the biggest advantage of the young trees is the ability to measure leaching.  With measuring leaching we are observing how much nitrogen is actually being used by the tree and how much is being lost through the soil profile.  One of the concerns with increasing the nitrogen rate on peaches in Florida is that the tree may not use that extra nitrogen and that extra may end up in the water table as it filters through the soil.  Since we can't see the water table directly we can hopefully monitor the movement and estimate how much is being lost among the treatments.  We don't want to do this with the mature trees because we don't have a good way to apply fertigation and a big part of the study is comparing the two application types (granular and fertigation).  In order to accomplish this we have installed a whole new orchard, including irrigation and injectors for fertigation and then planted our young trees!  In order to do everything we felt necessary we have planted 200 trees total!

Baby trees all in a row.

These are the sprinklers for each tree.

Hard to see but here is all 200 new trees!

I will be starting the second year of research with our mature trees and when we went to check on them earlier this week I was really surprised to see some of them already blooming!  There weren't enough blooming to be concerned about the upcoming freeze (yep, we got down to 20 degrees Fahrenheit here for two nights!) but it was still crazy to see peaches bloom in January!

While it is still down time as far as production goes, there is a lot coming up to do for the project and hopefully I can do a better job keeping you all up to date!

Lab Rats...

During my whole project Chris has been of invaluable help to me.  During the last two weeks his help in the lab has prevented me from despairing at the seemingly unending list of work!  He has kept me on track and provided lots of entertainment!

Last week we were working on blending all of my frozen peach fruit samples and getting them ready for Brix, pH TA analysis.  Essentially last week we were making peach smoothies, separating off the juice from the 'pulp' and freezing the juice.  This week we are taking that frozen juice and testing it with instruments to get an 'objective' understanding of the aspects of its flavor.  pH gives us the acidity, Brix an approximation of the sweetness and TA a slightly different understanding of the acidity.  This basically gives us numbers to the flavor differences between the fruit to help us see if the treatments we are using are have an effect (good or bad) on flavor.  This is the final in a long line of tests we have run this year on fruit quality - AND I AM SO EXCITED FOR IT TO BE FINISHED!!!!

As I said this all would have taken MUCH longer without my generous husband's help!

Quiet reflection on a not so quiet day...

As you might have guessed from my recent prolonged absence, it has been a terribly hectic season of life.  I (and vicariously Chris, Eb and the cat) have gone through a lot of stress trying to accomplish everything on my adviser's, my teacher's, my committee's and my to-do lists before our newest little man comes into the world.  It has been awful.  There have been tears, exhaustion, a couple of nights writing to 3 in the morning (not a good thing to do when you are pregnant and already prone to exhaustion), disappointment at not receiving the acknowledgement expected for all of this work, some sadness at not being able to travel to be with the rest of my family for Christmas (which also means NO possibility of seeing snow) and currently discouragement at not yet having all of the school stuff finished up so I can focus on my own little family.  All this accumulated emotion and negativity (which I had been doing a good job pushing under the rug in my heart) came gushing out in my poor husband's arms this morning at the prospect of processing more peach samples. After some discussion we decided it was best to stay home and rest today - the peaches will just have to wait.


Why do I tell you this?  No, it's not for your pity, or to depress you, but simply to be honest with you, and myself.  Following the Lord isn't always pretty - but it is usually our own doing that makes it so difficult.  Our own selfish wills that seek the broad, comfortable roads to walk down.  I certainly feel entitled to a comfortable life - but no one ever promised that.  My heart frequently needs to hear this truth, and maybe yours does on occasion too.  


I have really been questioning if this whole coming-to-Florida-and-having-a-baby-while-getting-a-PhD-thing was/is a huge mistake.  I have honestly been wanting to run away.  I have felt cheated and frustrated that all of this is so hard.  But who am I frustrated at?  Who's will would I be running away from?  Who am I questioning?  The answer to all of those is the Lord.  Who am I to question His plans and intentions for my life?  He led us here, He opened the doors to where we are and has provided in generous and miraculous ways for our needs along the way.  Has He ever let us go hungry? Has He ever let us go without a roof over our heads?  Has He ever left us alone?  The answer to all of these is a resounding 'NO'.  He has blessed us over and over again, with a loving church family, physical provision, a wonderful and healthy pregnancy, He has maintained our health through ridiculous circumstances and surrounded us with loving family and friends.  Even if He hadn't done all these things - what right would I have to be mad at Him?  He didn't promise that this season would be easy, He didn't promise a PhD and lots of rest, He didn't promise to give me all the time I want with my family and friends and He definitely didn't promise that I would get to see snow every Christmas.  


He did promise that He is in control (Psalm 62:11-12, Psalm 24, Job 38-41).  He did promise that He has good plans for me and my family (Jer. 29:11-13, Pro. 3:5-7).  He did promise that He would not send me somewhere He is not willing to go as well (Psalm 23) - that He will never leave me alone or forsake me (Isa. 41:10-11).  He did promise that He will never give us more than we can handle (1 Cor. 10:130, Rom. 5:3-5).  He did promise that if I follow His will, His name will receive glory.  What higher calling is there than being a vessel that carries glory to our Lord (2 Cor. 4:16-18)?  


What has He asked of me in return?  Simply to obey.  Even when I don't understand how this is useful, even when it is hard, even when I don't get the approval from people that I so desperately want, even when it seems financially difficult - or even impossible, even if it means doing something other people consider foolish (like having a baby right now), He just wants me to obey.  And He promised that through my obedience He will receive glory - through my obedience He can use me.  In the process He will draw me ever closer to Him, remake me ever more in His likeness - but He never promised that killing 'the old man' would be easy.  Just that He would be with me during the process and that He is in control. What more can I really ask for than that?

Yep, we're still kicking...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while!  With school starting up Chris and I have been running non-stop.  Chris is busy with his online class and preparing for another intensive coming up this Fall, he is also on the hunt for an internship.  Even though he doesn't plan on really starting until the first of the year, he needs to get started with interviews and such now just because of all the paper work that needs completed for him to get credit.  I am trying to maintain my sanity between a heavier than expected class load and an ever growing list of things that need done for my project before Eb comes along.  

This semester I am taking a Weed Management course... somehow I made it through six years and two degrees (in Horticulture mind you) without a single weeds class.  I really felt like this was a hole in my education so I was actually the one who asked to take this class - its not one my committee 'strongly recommended', like my plant anatomy which I am also taking this semester.  Both of these classes have great promise to be fun and interesting, but they are seriously time consuming.  I spend a total of six hours every week in Plant Anatomy lab alone, not counting lecture or study time for that class.  On the up side I think I might have found an undergraduate through this class who is willing to help me with some of the lab work yet to be finished in my peaches.  The third class I am in is Seminar Prep.  This is just a basic seminar class where we present a scientific paper as our own.  It shouldn't be too bad and I already have one of the seminars out of the way.

As far as research goes... the list is a little depressing so I won't lay it all out for you.  Let's just say I am working hard to prioritize and accept it might not all get done, while trying to find the motivation to get as much of it possible done.

So while it is working up to be a potentially overwhelming semester, I keep reminding myself that this is just a season, and soon I will be starting a an entirely new season when our little boy gets here!

PhD Update

This semester has been WAY busier than I anticipated!  One of my classes has been great, the other two have had a lot of busy work and my TA position turned into more time than I expected... here is a quick rundown!

Plant Physiology:
            Favorite class by far this semester!  We have been learning about the effects of the environment on plants and the ways plants can adapt to survive changing conditions.  You don't really think about it but plants have to be able to adapt to whatever condition is around them because, unlike animals, fleeing is not an option.  So, when it gets really hot they upregulate the genes for Heat Shock Proteins and start making new proteins and chemicals that help them endure the hotter weather that could potentially break down the cells!  And when it gets cold they have ways of keeping ice outside of the cell and changing their cell membrane content so their membranes can stay fluid in spite of freezing temperatures (if a cell's membrane become less fluid, or more solid, it can begin to leak and eventually kill the cell)!  God's design for plants is SO COOL!!!

Plant Nutrition:
             This class was unfortunately a disappointment.  The teacher who usually handles this class had recently been promoted to a different position, in an attempt to keep this class our department head took it over.  Sounds lake a good plan right?  He has lots of experience and should know this subject in and out because of his history in plant nutrition... that's what I thought, along with the rest of my classmates, and we were all wrong.  We have actually learned the most from our multiple guest speakers than from the department head.   We ended up doing a lot of busy work and not getting much feedback on our work and have not learned much about plant nutrition either.  What have we learned?  I have come away with some good but not cohesive information about applying fertilizer, taking soil tests in Florida, irrigation and we went on a really cool fieldtrip to multiple farms in the area.  Aside from that, this class has been rather frustrating.  Would not recommend it.

Seminar:
          This is one of the few required courses in my program.  I have to compose and deliver a seminar to the department about my project proposal.  Did I mention it was to the Whole department?  No pressure.  Fortunately, I've already done this and now I just have to attend class every Monday to hear everyone else's proposals.  Some of them are awesome and really well thought out... some not so much.  But that's OK because that's part of what this class is for, to get you to think about what you are doing and why.  My proposal went really well, but I didn't realize this was the class I was technically in!  I thought I signed up for Seminar Prep, no big deal right?  Since I already took Seminar and did well I shouldn't have to take seminar prep right?  Apparently not.  Since they are both required, I still have to take seminar prep in the Fall... shouldn't be hard but still rather annoying...

Ta for Growing Fruit for Fun and Profit:
           I have had a lot of fun listening to the different speakers in this class, the undergrads have been overall good, but then there are those issues that you must expect as TA.  Grade disputes, wonky excuses, and threats to go to higher authorities.  Aside from those this class hasn't been too much of a problem, just time consuming.

Project Extras:
           Work with my peaches has really picked up this spring.  I am still working to get estimates for the irrigation installation and did some calculations and searching earlier in the year to get the granular fertilizer started on the mature part of the study.  All in all this is rolling along and it looks like I will be busy soon with harvesting!

In other news I will be getting to go back to WKU soon to present my peach proposal to them!  During that time I am also going to some friends graduations and spending time with my family!

Well, that's the school news for now.  The next post will be more fun!  Promise!

Peach Watch!

 This Tuesday (the 22nd) I was at Citra again to apply a different kind of fertilizer, and here are the gorgeous peaches that met me!  I was amazed at how big they already are, in MARCH!

I took a couple of pictures next to my hand so you can get a size comparison.  Hopefully we will be harvesting mid to late April at the rate they are going.  I can't wait!

Right next to my peaches is a plot of early ripening blueberries.  They too are way further along than I expected!  Although they aren't changing color yet, they may be ripe early next month!  I can't wait because I have already offered to swap labor for fruit, and some of the folks in blueberries have offered me the same for peaches.

Welcome to early summer in Florida!

Chris kept me company while doing some studying!

The Peach Watch!

2-15-2011

It has been so fun to watch the peaches grow!  This is definitely not like home!  I went down one week and they were in full bloom with not many leaves, the next week the leaves were all popped out and most of the flowers were gone, then the next week there were baby peaches!!!

2-15-2011

2-22-2011

2-22-2011

3-2-2011

3-2-2011

3-2-2011

3-2-2011

Crazy Semester Update!

This semester may possibly be one of the most stressful of my college career to date.  In addition to typical stresses that come with attending classes, I have the lamentable issue of my classes and schedule not working out as planned.  Does that sound familiar, something not going as I planned? Hehe, oh well, I guess this is just going to be a life long lesson for me!

In spite of my best efforts to leave blocks of time open for the field work I knew would come this Spring, my classes and work managed to spread themselves across the week in a rather lackadaisical manner.  I also took on a TA position that I thought would involve minimal time and investment only to be proven wrong.  Add to the mix the majority of my class presentations and projects being due before Spring Break AND starting treatments on part of my project and designing the irrigation system for another part, in addition to all the maintenance involved in life and school and you have my crazy semester!

Fortunately, I am on the tail end of this time, but it is the reason you haven't been hearing much from me on a consistent basis!  Some neat updates through all this I would like to share are:

1.) I have part of my project laid out and labeled!
           Part of my project involves mature trees in an already established orchard.  Last week I was able to track down old field plots so I could identify and tag the trees we will be using.  I went back to this orchard this week and was amazed at the difference in the trees in just a week!  They were all leafed out and almost done blooming this week when they had just been in the throes of blooming last week!  See example below...

Week one with busy bees...

Week two with lots of leaves!

2.) During this time I have been learning a lot about peach trees, their flower anatomy and fertilization.  I found out that peach buds usually come in sets of threes in the spring, (one flower bud, then a vegetative bud, then another flower bud) BUT you can find all kinds of variations if you look closely enough!

This one has a crazy FOUR flower buds!

This one is typical with a blind node at the bottom.

On this one a flower bud died.

Nodes are the places where we find the buds and new growth, 'Blind nodes' means that node doesn't have any viable buds for new growth and not because they died or got knocked off but usually because the plant was growing too quickly to make any!  Sometimes we see dead buds and they can happen for lots of reasons like too much could in the winter, a cold snap in the spring, or something wrong with the bud to start with.  For my project I am going to count the different types of node on several branches per tree.

3.)  I am giving my proposal presentation next week!!!  This shouldn't stress me out too much because proposals can change.  But it is really intimidating because professors from the whole department often show up to these so you are not just presenting before your class!  I finally finished all the slide details last night and am now practicing over and over so I will hopefully not need notes while I present.  The good thing about this is it gets me thinking about how I need to set up my dissertation and where I can start writing over the summer.

Counting peach buds in the lab!

4.)There is a lot more bureaucracy at UF than there was at WKU!  Since Chris is working under one of the committee chairs in the department he has be privy to a lot of discussions and changes that are being attempted around the university and especially in our department.  He has been involved in decisions about tenure and promotion for the professors, health care decisions for Graduate students and Post Doc assistants and family leave to name a few of the big ones.  Through this I have learned a lot of the benefits of working at such a large university (namely the deep pockets!), but it is much harder to get things changed when you have so many more hoops to jump through.

5.)  We have some neat little parks really close to our apartment!!!  Just in the last twp weeks we have discovered two parks with nice nature trails within walking distance of our apartment!  Both of these are connected with what is called the Biven's Arm Outflow and all of the water from them runs to or through Payne's Prairie, a nature preserve close to us that has wild pigs, buffalo, horses and of course alligators.  In the first little park we found I got to see a live armadillo!!!  I specify live because we see lots of dead ones on the side of the road.  We found the second one the last Sunday and got to take a longer walk on it today.  It has a great deck out into a marshy area and we used it for our picnic!

It was hard to get a picture of ourselves, but here's the picnic!

Chris holding up a large tree so I could cross the sidewalk!

LIZZARD!!!!

This tree grew up and over the trail!

Didn't see this sign til the end of the trail... meep!

Well, that's all I have for now! Thanks for keeping up with us and there will be more to come!

Life right now...

Just a quick shot of Pandora helping Chris study!  She loves it when Chris is on the floor!  I love it when we are home for any length of time during this busy semester.

Pandora the loan shark!

When I started school my parents made a deal with me, get as many scholarships and grants as you can and we will split the rest with you.  I don't think any of us thought about grad school at that point so this only went through my Bachelor's but it was still an awesome deal!  Mom and Dad are working hard to become debt free so they have started forwarding the part of my loans they agreed to cover.  As of two weeks ago we were able to use this money to pay off one of my school loans!!! WooHoo!!!  While going through some of the mail we laid the notice down and Pandora claimed it!  She was excited too!  While I still have several loans left, none of them will start accruing interest until I graduate again, but Chris has some that are already gathering interest so future payments are being forwarded towards those.  We are so excited to see some of this debt go away!

The First Committiee Meeting (Que dramatic music!)

Shortly after Christmas my first committee meeting was scheduled.  In order to understand the significance of this you need a bit of background information.  I have spent the majority of the semester, in essence, preparing for this meeting.  I have been looking up papers to confirm that this experiment hasn't been done before, what other experiments have been done that are similar, learning about peaches in Florida, looking up around nitrogen rates around the country, determining if zero nitrogen should be used in my study, looking up and making possible field designs... and all the other details that I could collect that might come up in my meeting.  

Additionally, I was creating a working hypothesis, which included my purpose and plans for the study, expected out comes, design details and measurements to be taken.  This continued to grow as I found new information.

Also during this semester I have been searching for people to be on my committee.  I needed three people from my department and one person outside my department in addition to my adviser.  This was especially intimidating to me since I am new to this department and university.  I worked my way through faculty member's pages until I had a pretty sizable list ready to run past my adviser. She helped me weed it down to the best options, with some backups because a lot of the people I picked are very busy.  Once chosen I need to meet with these members, giving them a mini-proposal of the study, and see if they were interested in being on my committee.  To my great amazement all of my first choices agreed!  All but one of the potential members was very positive and excited at the prospect of my project... one of the members expressed concerns that I had enough to make a PhD quality project.  This really concerned me but my adviser counseled me not to worry too much until after my first meeting.

On top of all of this I was trying to lay out potential classes for my next four years.  To earn a PhD UF requires students earn 90 credit hours, potentially 30 hours from my Masters could transfer so I was under the impression that I had to come up with 60 hours of classes.  Due to this I combed the listings and had a sizable list together before the meeting, but I was unsure of how many research credits I was allowed.

The meeting came and I was FREAKED OUT!  I had combed over all of my information multiple times but I still didn't know what to expect... and you all know me and planning!  Somehow I managed to miss sending the Working Hypothesis to one of the members so I ended putting the whole thing up on the dry erase board.  This proved beneficial for discussing all of the questions we had however, since we could all see what one another was talking about.  Introductions were made, and as I put the information up on the board the questions started.  Fortunately Mercy (my adviser) answered most of the questions, I was told by my friend Rachel that advisers will continue to help you through questions and even answer for you if you are unsure until your qualifying examinations, from that point on you are on your own.  The scariest question for me came about half way through when one of the members asked if my project was PhD quality, to my relief no one agreed with her and thought my project was completely acceptable for a PhD!  After discussing numbers, rates, designs, tree ages, measurements to be taken and seemingly a million other details we came to my class list.  I was surprised and excited to learn that technically, if your committee approved, you could take all of your credit hours in research and never sit in a classroom your whole PhD program!  Obviously they wanted me to take a few classes, but if they are all offered at the times promised I should be finished with classes the Fall of 2012!

With a few changes to my Working Hypothesis, a new field design and a whole different plan for my class schedule I left my first committee meeting greatly relieved!

This first semester has been a great deal more stressful than I anticipated, especially since we are pushing to get the study planted this Spring I pretty much need a lot of my Literature Review finished and my whole design and plans for my study done.  While the Lit. Review isn't written, I feel confident through the research I have done to move forward with this project.  I know I've gotten a lot doe this semester, but I came out of it much more drained than I anticipated for my first semester.  Part of the difficulty comes from my desire to be in control and on top of things, and I really didn't feel that way this whole semester as far as my project was concerned, I always felt behind, and it overwhelmed me on several occasions.

Now, at a point where I can both look back at last semester and forward to the next, I am bracing myself for another busy season of planning, installing, planting, fertilizing, writing and recording, but trying to acknowledge the progress I've made so as not to despair.  Hopefully after this Spring my years will get into more of a rhythm and will return at least my illusion of control!  

One thing this semester has pointedly reminded me of is God's provision through my lack of control.  You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now, but apparently this is a hard one for me to grasp!  The Lord is continually putting me in situations where I need to depend on Him, and reminding me that He will always pull through on my behalf and provide as He promised.  This year has certainly been lesson after lesson in trust... and as my Blog title reminds me; Trust is still a work in progress in my life! 

And so it begins!!!

Seeds in the bag with pearlite.

So I started planting the peach seeds for my rootstocks this week!  It is so crazy to see the material confirmation that I am really committed to a four year project.  

When you eat a peach and find that hard pit in the middle that is actually part of the fruit not part of the seed.  Back in August I took 1,000 of those pits and cracked them open to get the real seeds out.  Then I soaked them for five day and put them in a bag with pearlite (kind of like little pieces of Styrofoam, it is the white things it bagged soil mixes).  Next the seeds went into a big cooler that kept them at a constant 45 degrees Fahrenheit.  This was to trick them into thinking they were experiencing winter so they would germinate.  Well now they have germinated (well half of them anyway) and it is time to put them in some soil and into the greenhouse so they can start growing!

New baby roots starting to grow

Hard to see but there are seeds poking out of each cell!

Only about half of them were far enough along that I could plant them so the rest went back into the cooler and should be ready in the next week or two.  We wait until they start germinating and growing their radical (baby root) before planting them to be sure they have had enough of the cold.  It was interesting to see how shallow they wanted me to plant them too, they wanted the tops of the seeds poking out!

It is exciting to see this progress but strange and a little scary at the same time because it is evidence of my commitment to this project and our time in Florida.  The Lord is good though and continues to reassure me every step that this is where we are supposed to be.  One of the assurances was actually in these seeds germinating.

In the same cooler as my seeds is a bag of a different variety of seeds that one of the professors needs for a project next year.  They have been in the cooler since July 4th and not a single one has germinated yet.  It should only take peach seeds about two months in the cooler to trigger germination.  They haven't molded or decomposed in any way, they are just sitting there.  Everyone is stumped.  At first they were concerned it was a problem with the cooler but now that mine have germinated they know its not the cooler.  So in a way I feel that the successful germination of my seed is another confirmation that this is what I'm supposed to be doing!  


It is always so amazing to me the ways Gos has designed His creation for success.  I mean think about it, if these seeds didn't require soaking with lots of water and a cold period they would germinate as soon a the peach flesh came off... at the END of summer.  They wouldn't have enough time to establish their roots, get good mature leaves and stems or store carbohydrates for the coming winter months.  They wouldn't survive!  But God designed them so the would have to be exposed to lots of water and a long cold period before they would start to grow, so that when they DID start to grow it would be at the best time for a new plant to start, spring!  And they would have all summer to grow and store up carbohydrate for the coming winter!  So Cool!

We serve a God who plans ahead, can see what's coming next, knows how to best prepare us for it and wants our good!  If He cares so much for the next generation of peach trees, how can I doubt that He cares for me, who is much more precious to Him?  Thank you Lord for the visible reminder of what you told us in Matthew 6:25-34!    

 

More new sights from Florida...

As promised here are a few more photos of sights around campus!  Next time I will try to show more pictures of buildings on the rest of campus, but you know me I love the plants!  Also these are all really close to my building and on the southern part of campus!

My cubicle in the Grad. Office

There are big live oaks all over campus, when it rains they have ferns in them!

Small walking garden near my building.

Nifty leaf prints in the garden walk!

Can you see the lizard? He's there!

Ferns in the palm tree! they are all over!

Really pretty, tiny cathedral near Lake Alice.

No, not a wildlife preserve, its on campus! (Lake Alice)

More big oaks...

Island in Lake Alice... with Cypress Knees!

Squirrel! With a nut!

One way to reduce water runnoff! (Holes in pavement)

This is perennial peanut! Its used as a ground cover and all over the place!

These are Bat Houses!  Apparently there are a lot of bats and they help a ton with bugs!

School is in...

Classes have begun and a routine is swiftly forming and since we are four weeks in I think it is safe to tell you about them!  As I mentioned back in April it was difficult to even find classes to register for but we finally did and I thought I knew what to expect as the week before classes start was drawing to a close... I was wrong!

On the Wednesday before classes started I received an email telling me that the Woody Plant Physiology course I was registered for was canceled, I was only registered for this class, Graduate Survey of Biochemistry and some research hours (I have to have nine hours a semester to maintain my assistantship and no other classes would seem to fit with these two).  I knew I needed the Biochemistry (much as I wished it had been the canceled class!) so I scrambled to my adviser to see what to replace this class with.  We decided to replace the Woody Plant Phys with just plain Plant Physiology (I haven't had this since Sophomore year and knew I needed a brush up) and the research hours with Graduate Professional Development (a general introduction to life as a Grad. Student).

The Biochemistry is proving to be one of the biggest challenges just because of the vast amount of information presented.  Thankfully this course is designed for students who have never had Biochem before but it has kept me hopping because we meet four days a week and there are quizzes every Monday over the previous week's material.  The amazing intricacies of the creation surrounding us usually amaze me but even more so now as I learn a tiny portion of the chemical processes that make life around us possible.  The irreducible complexity of the world around us extends down to even the formation and folding of proteins.

Plant Physiology is proving to be a much needed refresher on the details of how plants work.  I am remembering a lot as we go but this professor is also going into much greater detail than I remember from my Sophomore class!  Technically the class I am enrolled in is intended for undergraduates, in order to earn the Grad. component hours we have an extra class meeting every week in which we are learning how to present and critique scientific articles.  Background research for my project involves reading lots of scientific articles so I look forward to learning how to read them with a more critical eye.

Graduate Professional Development is turning out to be my 'bunny class' of the semester and boy am I thankful to have one!  In this class we have guest lecturers every week who inform us about different aspects of Grad school and where we can find information.  So far we have had lectures about our responsibilities as Grad. students, how to prepare for teaching your first class (for teaching assistants), and what academic conflict resolution looks like.  There are NO tests!  We have to write a one page critique of each presentation and participate in class discussion, Love It!  I now know where to find a lot of information... I just need to go find it!

I am sharing a grad office with other students, like at Western, however I am rarely the only one in there, unlike Western.  I am enjoying getting to know my office mates and they have been extremely helpful, but I admit it has been odd being the only white person in my office.  There is one other Caucasian woman on our floor whom I have gotten to know fairly well but we are definitely our number in this program. I have been amazed at the diversity in this program, in my office alone there are representatives from Mexico, Argentina, China, India and Azerbaijan.  My world is definitely getting bigger!

Sorry no pictures!  I hope to get some good pictures of campus and what I have been working on soon!