Happy Earth Day/Week: Reducing Our Landfill Waste

Like it? We bought it off a scrappy looking moisture farmer on Tatooine. Think we'll use it as a compost bin. Our neighbor down the block gardens and composts and offered us some earth worms once it gets going.


See also: Gardening on a Hill.

Phipps Conservatory: the colors of spring

I had some free time in my schedule one sunny day in April, so Dear Husband and I betook ourselves to our favorite place in Pittsburgh, the Phipps Conservatory, so catch their Enchanted Forest exhibit before it closed. There we enjoyed the topiaries, bonsai, woodland creatures, sculptures, and fantastic colors of spring. Somehow the light wasn't quite right to illuminate the Chihuly glass art, but you can see everything else came out nice and bright. We try to go during off times to avoid the crowds, as it's really not worth the trip to shuffle through in one long impatient line. It typically takes us an hour to walk the whole of the interior, unless we find a bench and sit awhile. If it's not too cold or too dark, we'll check out the external gardens, including the Japanese garden with koi pond and the children's garden (see the sun-worshipping cherub below). They do such a nice job with the animals made out of natural materials.

 

What magnificent bold colors on the orchids and bromeliads.

Is that a Hobbit house or does Goldilocks live there?

We timed our visit just right to see the tulips before they were blown.

This is the Victoria Room, where they place an enormous Christmas tree during the winter. Click here to watch a short time-lapse video! Today the metal skeleton was reflected in the still water, while the yellow rubber duckies mirrored the golden lilies around the edges.

That's So Pittsburgh: Gardening on a Hill

This is what our rear garden looks like. It's a raised bed behind our rented townhouse that the last several tenants have allowed to grow wild. Our nextdoor neighbor says the last owner of the house was a woman who had a beautiful garden until she grew too old to keep it up. I dislike gardening and don't feel strongly about keeping up the landlord's property, so when we moved in I pulled out the worst of the weeds, planted my garden art, and left it like that. Am I contributing to urban blight? And then two lone tulips sprouted defiantly.


Editor's note: I write about gardens with some regularity, sometimes with humor, more pictures, and/or garden art. The second link is to the first of a three-part series.

What Internship Looks Like XXXVII: Lounging Around

Sometimes internship looks like hanging out in the residents' lounge to read articles for a literature review on the use of social media for life-long learning in medicine.

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What Internship Looks Like XXXVI: Friendly Competition

Sometimes internship looks like taking over the world with a freeze ray over a glass of wine and a bowl of popcorn. This is the game Nefarious that my youngest brother got us for Christmas.

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That's So Pittsburgh: Lenten Fish Fry

On Friday, Dear Husband, another of the interns, and I walked over from our continuity clinic to one of the local churches to attend their weekly Lenten fish fry. These are a Pittsburgh tradition not just at Catholic churches but also at volunteer fire departments and VFWs. We were at Saint Colman's Roman Catholic Church, where they advertised hand-dipped cod fillets. They also offered what I assumed were store-bought pierogies, although some fish fries pride themselves on the old ladies making handmade pierogies. St. Colman's also offered coleslaw, French fries, and halushka, as well as an enticing table of desserts. I bought my fish without the bun. It was steaming hot, thick, and delicious with tartar sauce. The fries were also surprisingly good, but the coleslaw, pierogies, and halushka were just okay. Although there were trays of tomatoes, pickles, and shredded iceberg lettuce, I hesitate to think that many of our patients eat like this on a daily basis. As it was, we were all too full for dessert and so skipped the cake and frozen soft serve ice cream.

This may be the most Pittsburgh thing I have seen yet: a public online map of all of the fish fries in the area.

What Internship Looks Like XXXV: Studying in the Call Room

Sometimes internship looks like holing up on the grody couch in a windowless call room at the hospital to study for a standardized test.

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