Medical Student By Day, Spider Wrangler By... Day Off

    Since I finished USMLE Step 1, I have been making good progress on my "To Do After Boards" list.  On Easter Sunday, I "installed" my garden for this year.  I had such a relaxing afternoon working outside in the sun by myself.  I forgot how peaceful and enjoyable gardening is.  The official line-up for 2012:

• rosemary
• basil
• green onions
• cilantro
• watermelon
• tomato
• sage
• thyme
• dill

    This year, I decided to do less veggies and more herbs, since the veggie plants don't produce as much as I would like.  At least with the herbs, I'll use them all the time.  Unfortunately, the hardware store I always get my starter plants at had a terrible selection this year, so I am actually going to try starting from seeds for a few of the items.  I've never done that before so I'm nervous, especially with my vacation coming up, the timing of watering and planting might be a little tricky.  

Starting from seeds 

     I can't remember if I ever blogged about this, but last year when I was putting in my 2011 garden, I came across a family of black widows.  They decided to take up residence underneath an unused bag of garden soil, and there were a LOT of them.  Normally, I am not too scared of spiders (in fact, I am the official "spider wrangler" of the household), but black widows just give me the heebie jeebies.  Ick!  So anyway, at the time I tried to smash them with my shovel, but I don't think I got them all, so now every time I'm out in my garden, I always keep my eyes peeled in case they have decided to return for revenge.  This year, I encountered a variety of nasty spiders, but they weren't black widows, so I wasn't scared.  I can't imagine how arachnophobes would ever manage to garden.