Peace

As I read through a book yesterday, this sentence pulled at my heart as I recognized something pure and alive that I have experienced and that I need more of.


"There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God's favor to them in life, through death, and on forever." Knowing God by J.I. Packer

Joshua Tree

Last week, I found myself in Joshua Tree National Park with my parents and sister who were in town for my graduation. The park is named after the Joshua Trees which are spattered all around the park and which look like something straight out of Dr Seuss.

But, my purpose in this post isn't to write about Joshua Trees, but to share my favorite picture of this one dead tree that I took on a short hike.

I think it's one of my favorite photos that I've ever taken.

Satisfaction = WPR

There is a direct relationship between the amount of work, patience, and risk a plant takes and the amount of satisfaction you get when you harvest it. In mathematical terms that would be WPR = S
W = hours of work
P = weeks of waiting
R = number of times you freak out thinking the whole plant is going to die
S = satisfaction


For lettuce, W = 1hr, P = 10 weeks (we get little sun), R = 3. So, my satisfaction is 30. Don't ask me what the units of satisfaction are. They might be smiles or something cheesy like that.


With my purple cabbage, given that I gave the cabbage about 3 hours of attention picking off pests, it took about 30 weeks to grow, and I thought the whole thing was going to fail at least 20 times, my satisfaction level upon harvesting and eating it yesterday was at a whopping 1,800 smiles.


Clearly feeling the satisfaction. Well, not so much.

I think I was pretending the cabbage was a weapon, so I was trying to look intense. How embarrassing.


Onto the next pictures. There she is:

Done

On this warm, breezy May day, I put on a cute dress, covered it with a black robe, walked across a stage, turned my tassel, and got a J.D.!


A few of the people I love most in the world came to watch. From left to right: my dad and mom, husband, yours truly, my in laws, and my sister.

I really don't know if I would have made it without this guy's support.

And how does it feel to be done? In a word: relieving.

My Husband is Trying to Grow a Pineapple

I firmly that believe that everyone is weird. You just have to get to know individuals to unearth their quirks. And, to me, it's people's wacky sides that make them so interesting and fun to know!


My husband is no exception. (And I love it!)


It all started innocently enough with a few tomato plants, a bed of Chinese broccoli, a mushroom kit. Now, the gardening going on at home has reached some new level of absurdity considering how little experience and space we have.


Our little strip of dirt that's three feet deep and two bedrooms wide now boasts the following plants in various stages of growth: parsley, basil, strawberries, five types of tomatoes, carrots, red bell peppers, serrano peppers, thai peppers, a hydranga, some other flowers, squash, two types of lettuce, kale, chard, arugula, bok choy, cilantro, celery, spinach, snap peas, three types of beans, tomatillos, artichokes, red cabbage, rosemary, a couple of succulents, and beets. I'm probably missing something. Oh yes, the onion flower. An old onion started sprouting, so we stuck it in the ground and after producing many green onion-like shoots, it is now a three foot tall purple flower with a thick green oniony stem.


The seeds from within the pits from within the apricots that I bought this weekend are now in jars filled with dirt in our fridge to fake winter like conditions to force them to sprout. So, I guess Michael's officially growing an apricot tree too.


We also have red bell pepper plants growing thanks to my husband taking the seeds from red bell peppers bought from the store, drying them on a plate in the sun, and planting them a few weeks (months?) later.


And even with all that going on, I think this new development takes the cake when it comes to absurdity: Michael is trying to grow a pineapple. I fully endorse this event or product.


Here's the original pineapple.

Removing the top:

Letting it dry out in the backyard. (Mind you, this is following instructions from the blog of some man who has successfully grown pineapples in the continental US.)

The top sitting in water in a jar on top of our fridge. The goal is root production. Notice the water changing schedule, written in dry erase marker, with a reminder for me to change it while he's out of town this week.

An old yogurt container filled with proper pineapple growing soil waiting to receive our pineapple plant.

Assuming all goes as planned, it is going to take two to three years for our plant to produce a single pineapple. I'm not holding my breath.

Mother's Day at My Place

I had no insightful Mother's Day post planned, but after looking at the pictures from my fun afternoon celebrating with my mother-in-law (and husband and father-in-law), I couldn't help just throwing them up here to share!

Michael with his mom.

Growing up, when Michael's mom asked him what he wanted for dinner, the answer was almost always one of two Thai dishes involving beef and broccoli served over noodles. For Mother's Day, Michael made her one of the dishes. Raad Naa score between Nila and Michael is now one million to one.

  

Milk tea in the freezer in an attempt to get it chilled quickly.

The veggies go in. We included chard, bok choy, snap peas, snap pea tendrils, and carrots from the garden. I love my garden. The broccoli and red bell peppers were from Costco. I love Costco.

The final product was not photogenic. You're just going to have to believe me when I say that it tasted better than it looks.

And the festivities aren't over yet! My mom lives 1,000 miles away in Denver, so I normally don't get to see her to celebrate. But, she will be in town later this week for my law school graduation! I am looking forward to spending lots of time with her, my dad, and my sister.

Berry Smoothie

I don't know what the rest of the country is like, but here in Southern California, it feels like summertime and that means that it's smoothie time! 


I always love being on the receiving end of new ideas for food and snacks, no matter how simple, so I thought I would be on the giving end for this yummy smoothie that I have been making almost daily for the past week or so. It's so simple, the recipe is this picture:

For the berries, I recommend getting the frozen three berries mix and the frozen strawberries from Costco. Any orange juice will do. The white stuff is vanilla yogurt. I added no extra sugar.


Blend it up on a hot day and sip away.

This is Going to be a Long Summer

I was sitting at my desk in my apartment's second bedroom studying for my antepenultimate (third to last, good word, huh?) final of law school when I heard banging, bumping, shuffling sounds through my earplugs. I first thought it was my upstairs neighbors moving their furniture. They are always buying and moving furniture. Then, it got louder, and I thought that someone was trying to break in, so I looked up and saw black hairs crawling like spiders over a white arm that was reaching over my fence!  Yikes!


Before I could react, I noticed that the hand was holding a giant, clear plastic bag containing a heavy brown box which he proceeded to drop (thump!). In the box were the above pictured books. Except for Mockingjay. That's just to give you an idea of how thick these books are.


So, turns out it was nothing more than the UPS man delivering two thirds of my summer. I had missed his knock on my front door since my earplugs were in, so he kindly walked around the apartment to fling the 20+ pound box containing my bar prep books over the fence.

To become a real, live practicing attorney, I have three finals to take, a graduation to attend, and then I will crack open these books and study for two months straight in hopes of passing the California Bar Exam, a grueling three day, eighteen hour exam that covers almost every class I took in law school (and a few I didn't take) including Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Torts, Remedies, Civil Procedure, Property, Contracts, Trusts and Wills, Professional Responsibility, Evidence, etc., etc., etc.

This is going to be a long summer. But, I am determined to study hard, pass it on the first try, and take plenty of fun breaks to stay sane. Wish me luck!