Back to School

Jeff starts back teaching today, and I'll be on campus with him two days a week! The university reinstated its "Listener's License" program, basically a course audit system. As the spouse of faculty, I could have taken university courses for half price, but that's still quite a lot of money for a three credit undergraduate class. So the audit idea works much better for me, since I'm interested in general enrichment, not GPAs and fulfilling requirements.

I've registered for Music Theory, and my first class is this afternoon. I'm really excited and am already looking at the course schedule to see what other classes I might want to take next semester if this works out.

Since I'll be on campus all day, I'll also be volunteering as Jeff's personal assistant a few hours and taking advantage of the university fitness center, which has all kinds of group classes, workout equipment, swimming lanes, and more. Summer has been wonderful, but here's to a new adventure this fall!

Landscape Design

We had a fantastic lecture on landscape design in the Master Gardener class by the state specialist. It was such a good fusion for me of my growing love of horticulture and my existing passion for interior design. This is just exterior design! She pulled in several concepts I'm already familiar with such as flow, simplicity, rule of three, etc. They were presented in a new context that sort of clicked for me.

She very organized, and I'm glad she emphasized having a plan. We discussed how to map the property and come up with several templates that designate conditions, positive and negative features, needs and desires, etc. Most gardeners start with a plant and then try to decide where to stick it; her method was the complete reverse. It's such a logical process when done that way. I'm looking forward to implementing this knowledge next week when we design the landscape for a Habitat for Humanity house.

She highly recommended the title "The Southern Gardener's Book of Lists" by Lois Chaplin. It's not a picture book, so you might want a pictorial reference or the Internet handy; but it has lots of categories of plants for specific purposes, such as low hedges under windows or flowers for poor drainage, etc. Between this and several other gardening materials, I'm starting to grow my personal library.

Homework

It's rainy and cold again here (we're even expecting another 1-2 inches of snow tonight). Perfect for wrapping up in a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate and digging into my companion for the next three months, my Master Gardener manual.

I have four chapters to cover before lectures on Thursday, so now is a good time to begin!

Master Gardener Missives

I'm excited to say I just finished my first Master Gardener class! This was the first lecture of a 13 week course to train interns. Then I will have a year to complete my 50 hours of volunteer work in a variety of gardening and horticulture areas. Once that is accomplished, I will become an official Master Gardener!

I have my handbook and my homework all cut out for me. The course will be covering:

• Soil, Nutrition and Plant Physiology
• Plant Pathology and Weed Science
• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Container Gardening
• Annual and Perennial Flowers
  
• Ornamentals
• Turf
• Landscape Design

That's a lot of material in less than a semester! I've always been an "A" student, so I aim to ace my tests and stay on top of the coursework. It will also be a lot of fun, as the other interns all seem like a great group of people. I'm really looking forward to learning and "growing" (pun intended)!

Labels for Learning

In an effort to immerse ourselves in German to prepare for our Berlin excursion, I have taken the advice of a well-traveled friend. She suggested that I label everything in the house in German so I associate the item with the new language. Since I'm a very visual learner (as well as a little label-happy), this is perfect for me. I typed up several sheets of common nouns on cardstock and spent a good part of the day taping labels to household items.

I took German for three years in high school, but, as most Americans know, we don't really learn (or remember) a lot from public school foreign language classes. It's coming back in bits and pieces, thanks to the Rosetta Stone program I'm working through, which is good. German has masculine, feminine, and neuter articles (i.e., three forms of words like "a", "an", and "the"), which was always tricky for me. The washing machine is she, but the dryer is he. The faucet is he but the sink is it. So, I also included the relevant article on the labels. Now I just have to make sure I look at them after all this work!