Major Life Changes

Wow, so it's been a while. Sorry for the radio silence! This year has been quite busy for me. I spent all of the spring semester completing my master's thesis, entitled "Fermentative Production of Short-Chain Fatty Acids and Methyl Ketones in Escherichia coli." It was a huge endeavor and the longest paper I've ever written. I can't believe that I ever struggled with 4 page papers in high school. My thesis was 76 pages! I defended in April and passed, and commencement was in May. So I'm officially a Master of Science! Graduate school is probably the hardest thing I have done so far, but the payoff was worth it.
My family visited me for graduation and we went to the Botanical Gardens in Madison. I will try to post the pictures soon. It was a huge place with large outdoor gardens and I really liked it. I could have spent an entire day there. At the end of our vacation we all went to Chicago and saw The Who on their current tour.
Thankfully, after I got back from vacation I was able to get in touch with a recruiter at Aerotek Scientific and they were able to help me find a job. I've been at my new position for about a month now and I enjoy it. I'm a Pharmaceutical Quality Control technician now at a veterinary company in Des Moines. It's very different from working in a biology lab. It's essentially analytical chemistry and there is a whole load of paperwork and very specific rules about everything because it's quality control. I've adjusted pretty well so far and I like the job itself. Commuting does suck though so next year I am planning on trying to move closer.
My garden is still growing. No harvests yet so I don't have anything to show off, but I can probably harvest some basil and lemon balm soon. There are lots of green tomatoes so I'm just waiting on them to finish growing and ripen!

My New Orchids!

Like I said yesterday, I bought four new orchids at the Orchid Fest yesterday. They're currently all situated near my southern window, so we'll see how they do right there. 

 Here's the Phaelonopsis I bought. I have one that bloomed purple so I picked a yellow one.

 Here's the bloom! It's beautiful and there's another bloom stalk growing right now.

 This is one of the hybrids I bought. I chose it based on the flower,. It's a pink and yellow color.

 Here's the closeup. It's a very vibrant bright pink, super nice in this grey winter weather.

 Here's another hybrid. I liked both the color and the shape of the flowers.

 The ragged edges on the flowers are really cool. These are big flowers too!

 Last up is the Lady Slipper orchid I picked. Obviously I went for the purple one.

 Here's what the flower looks like! It's got those funky hairs on the sides which make it extra cool.

And here are all four of them sitting in a nice group! They really brighten up the room.

Orchid Fest 2015 At Reiman Gardens

Today I went to the second annual Orchid Fest at Reiman Gardens here at Iowa State. I'm a novice orchid grower, previously having only one Phaelonopsis. I bought four more orchids today, which I'll showcase in a another post. But here are a bunch of photos I took of the beautiful orchid specimens in the conservatory! Included is one bromeliad that was flowering blue and pink and looked really cool. Enjoy these pictures! I definitely enjoyed walking through this exhibit, especially in the middle of winter.There are a variety of orchids in here, from Phaelonopsis to Dendrobium.

2014 Collection: Euphorbias

Yikes, it's been almost two weeks since I posted! I started my thesis this past week. It's a lot of work and I'm still going through all of my references before getting to the meat of the thesis. But it's officially started and if all goes well, I will graduate in May! Then I'll have to change the title of this blog because I won't be in graduate school anymore. Anyway, this time I'll show off my Euphorbias!

 This is Euphorbia anoplia. I don't know much about this species. I bought it just because I thought it looked cool with the way it twists as it grows.

 Now this guy is Euphorbia meloformis. It's pretty neat, striped like that. It also makes these flower stalks that look kind of fat. I don't have a picture of those. In fact, there's one on this plant right now and I'm not sure if it's just a flower stalk or a baby plant. I didn't think these were self-fertile so I'm leaning towards flower stalk.

 This is Euphorbia milii. My variety blooms yellow, as you can see, but the traditional variety has red blooms.

 Here's the whole plant. Euphorbia milii is known as Crown of Thorns, and traditionally is considered to be the plant that the crown of thorns Jesus wore during His crucifixion was made of. 

 This is the first Euphorbia I ever bought! It's Euphorbia obesa, the Baseball plant! It is round and smooth, with that nice striping on the sides. You can see mine is flowering. Mine flowers year-round, but it's not self-fertile so they never make babies.

 Here's the top-down view of Euphorbia obesa. It's so nice and symmetrical!

Lastly, this is Euphorbia trigona var. rubra. It's a bit hard to tell from this photo, but this plant is mostly red! It grows those leaves and then they fall off. It's a weird plant but very, very pretty.

2104 Aloe Collection

Here is my Aloe collection. I also have two big old Aloe vera plants that I didn't take pictures of. 

 This little beauty is an Aloe aristata. It is dark green with that slight red blush from the high light. It is really pretty and has stayed in this rosette form.

 This is Aloe buhrii. I bought it randomly on a whim. It is growing some more leaves so it will be interesting to see how it grows.

 Here is Aloe juvenna. I almost killed it last winter but I was smart this year and brought it away from the window before it got too cold. It's still very small but it is a neat little plant.

Lastly is Aloe vaombe. This is another plant that I bought randomly and don't know a whole lot about. It's grown some new leaves recently so it seems happy and I'm looking forward to seeing it grow.

2014 Adenium Collection

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope your 2015 is an excellent year and that all your plants grow happily. I'm going to try and get all of my 2014 plant collections posted in the next month or two, before my thesis writing reaches epic proportions and eats all of my time. So to start off, this is a smaller collection of mine, the Adenium group, as well as one Adenia. 

 This is my Adenia glauca. It's looking a bit sad right now. I've just fertilized it in hopes that it just needs some nutrition, but who knows. It's not rotting, I know that so I'm not sure what the issue is.

 This is my Adenium arabicum. It actually has leaves at the moment. This plant is really sensitive to changes in temperature, light, or the vibes of the house because it will drop its leaves at a moment's notice.

 This is the top of one of my Adenium obesum seedlings. I started ten seeds, six germinated, and four plants have lived for about two years now. This is their second winter. Some of them are starting their leaf drop.

 Here's another seedling that has dropped most of its leaves for the winter. They grow back every spring so it isn't anything to worry about. Just stop watering them if there's no active leaf growth.

 Here's a closeup of the caudex of one of the seedlings. The reason I chose to try seeds instead of buying a cutting is because Adenium obesum cuttings don't usually get the big interesting caudex that seedlings do. I like the neat caudex so I decided to take the challenge of growing from seeds.

Here are the four seedlings that have made it to their second winter! Hopefully they will all make it and keep growing happily this upcoming year.

2014: Agave Collection

This year could definitely be the year of the Agave. I tripled my collection! I really am getting into these guys, although they are very pointy and can be a pain to repot. 

 This is Agave americana. Yep, the Century Plant that blooms rarely and can get huge. I hope that mine will flourish and someday get to be one of those huge ones.

 This one is called Agave shawii. It is very spiny! The spines are kind of a reddish brown color.

 This is a closeup of the leaves on my Agave striata. These hurt a lot when they poke you! I've accidentally done it a few times and wow, these are sharp.

 This is what the whole Agave striata looks like. It's a fairly small plant right now but it has been making lots of new leaves.

 This is a closeup of some Agave stricta var. rubra that I have grown from seed. They are just a little over a year old now. The plant in the foreground is showing off the red color very nicely.

 Here's the entire pot of Agave stricta. Next month I'm going to repot them nicely because they're sprawling around a bit and looking silly.

 This is Agave titanopsis. Its spines are brown as opposed to the rest of the leaves. It's not as sharp and pokey as some of these other species I have.

And lastly, this is Agave victoriae-reginae var. compacta. As you can see, it has made lots of pups but they don't have the white coloring yet that the main plant does. This is a really pretty Agave which is what attracted me to it in the first place.

2014: Adromischus Collection

Since it's the end of the year, I thought it would be a good idea to photograph all of my indoor plants to see their progress over the past year and to properly catalogue them. So the next series of posts will be focused on my indoor collection. My plan is to group them by genus; if I only have one plant in a genus I'll either post it alone or with a group of similar plants. This post is about Adromischus.

 This is Adromischus cristatus. The leaves feel kind of puffy, like little pillows. This plant flowered shortly after I bought it, and you can see that it is making a pup on one side.

 This is Adromischus mariane. It is mottled brown and grey for the most part. It also flowered profusely this year, and then started growing new leaves, which are greener. It has kind of gotten floppier as it has grown.

 I know this is an Adromischus but I have forgotten the species. It also flowered once this year.

This is the very first Adromischus I bought, and I have also forgotten its species name. It has never flowered for me. However, it has grown quite a lot since I bought it and is continuously making new leaves. It's currently in a pot with a sedum hybrid but I will probably move it into its own pot soon.

How to Make Ground Cherry Jam

Ground cherries were a new plant for me this year. I only had one plant and it flourished, so next year I will aim for more. I saved my harvest all season to make jam. Here's how I did it!

 This is what my harvested ground cherries looked like, still in their husks. The husks dry and get papery. Ideally they will all be a yellowish color, but I grabbed my last harvest when it started to freeze, so a few of them stayed green.

 The first thing to do is husk them all. I got about a cup of ground cherries from this harvest. Just enough to make some jam, but this is why I'll grow more next year. The yellow ones are the most ripe but the green ones taste fine too, at least I think so!

 Next I boiled the ground cherries with 1/4 cup of water, 1/8 cup of lemon juice, and 1/3 of a box of pectin. Once the ground cherries started to burst, I mashed them as well as I could and then added 3/4 cup of sugar and stirred it all together. It starts to gel pretty quickly.

 Once it's all gelling, I poured it into this freezer safe container. It's about a half pint, I think. Doesn't that look tasty?

There it is, all golden and tasty! I froze this and will be able to use it all winter. It's perfect for getting that tomato taste in an easy to use jam!