Officially a Junior

Time sure does fly!  I just can't believe that two years ago I sat anxiously awaiting my graduation from high school.  I was counting the days down and it felt like the end of those awful years would never come.  Now I have successfully finished two years of college.  I can officially say I'm a junior at Washington State University studying Pre-Pharmacy and minoring in Horticulture.  It feels so great!  Yet, it feels like yesterday that I moved away from home to begin college when, in fact, its been 634 or so days ago.  This last semester went really well, but I was not sad for it to end.  I was so ready for a break.  Summer break could not come soon enough some days, but in the blink of an eye my second year of college came to an end.  I will be spending my summer at home working on our family farm.  I am also looking forward to relaxing, riding horses, spending time with my family, hanging out with my boyfriend, riding bikes, and going for runs.  It's going to be great!  Let my summer blogging begin!

I Made It!

I made it through 40 days of no ice cream and no chocolate!  It was not easy, and I was starting to get a bit cranky at the end.  Everything is good now.  I have had ice cream and chocolate everyday since Easter day and I plan on having both everyday for the next few days.  I mean I have 40 days to make up for! 

Easter was a nice day.  I began the day by eating some chocolate for breakfast.  I had too!  I mean  my mom did not send me chocolate to look at!  Once I had my very healthy breakfast, I went to a really nice Easter service.  Then I came back to my dorm, took a three hour nap, continued to lay in bed and watch organic chemistry videos, and then went to spin class.  It was nice and relaxing. 

Now I'm sure everyone who read watched chemistry videos probably thought "oh, fun!"  Just kidding.  I'm sure you actually thought "what is wrong with that girl?"  Well, I wonder too but organic chemistry is currently my life.  I go to hours of office hours, do pages of practice problems, and watch countless videos of reactions.  It's a blast!  It is all worth it, though, because organic chemistry is tough but doing all these things really helps me understand it.  Now let's just hope I can make it through these last 7 days of classes and finals.  I made it through Lent, therefore, I should survive finals since I will have the pleasure of consuming ice cream and chocolate!

Coffee, Tea, and Beer

Coffee, tea, and beer are three things that played a major role in my life this last semester.  Well, at least, a major role in my life within my horticulture class.  It goes like this...One assignment was a group project in which we had to form a hypothesis, carry out an experiment, record results, and make conclusions.  So my group chose to apply beer, tea, and coffee as fertilizers to tomato and zinnia plants.  We compared the results of these fertilizers to plants that were fertilized with Miracle Grow.  Why did we chose beer, tea, and coffee?  Well we knew that more often than not flat beer goes down the drain on Sunday mornings and tea and coffee grounds just go into the trash.  Since we knew each of these beverages contained nutrients required by plants for growth and development, we decided to test them on plants.  Also, when one searches online, there are gardening sites that suggest ways to incorporate coffee, beer, and tea into uses on your garden.  We did not use any of these recipes.  Instead, we sprinkled grounds, beer, and Miracle Grow on to groups of plants.  In the end, the plants that were fertilized with Miracle Grow grew the tallest.  We knew these plants would grow well.  The plants that were fertilized with coffee grew taller than those given beer and tea.  We expected the coffee to do well but we also expected tea and beer plants to be more successful than they were.  Now that I have seen the affects of these leftover beverages on tomatoes, I may start using coffee grounds on my tomatoes that I grow during the summer.  Since I am not a coffee drinker, I will be getting my coffee ground from Starbucks because a few years back Starbucks started a program called Grounds For Your Garden.  This was something we learned about when researching for our project.  In all, the experiment was took time, but I did learn from it and it was kind of fun.  Just thought I would share this tid-bit of information.