State of the blog and update on the jelly fig plants

This marks my 20th post for The Darwinian Doctor blog!

State of the blog

Barring a recent break to recover from a family vacation to New Orleans that was tragically marked by gastroenteritis, I’ve been mostly meeting my goal of at least one quality post per week.  

As I write, the direction of the blog is becoming clearer.  I’m having the most fun writing posts that document my journey towards financial independence.  I’m finding it incredibly valuable to synthesize my money angst into a coherent financial plan for both my own peace of mind and for your entertainment.  I feel that over time, the majority of my posts will gravitate to this topic.

In a great turn of events, an article I wrote about how to care for non-financially independent parents was recently accepted as a guest post on the venerable White Coat Investor blog!  This should run sometime next month.  

I do also get a great feeling of satisfaction from my posts about residency training, medicine, and general health topics as well.  I see these topics as being perennially useful to those just starting out their journey into a career in medicine, and therefore these will also have a special place in this blog moving forward.

The general health topics take a substantial amount of research and seem to be more time consuming than my other posts, but I find that they are quite useful to help guide my own health and lifestyle choices.  As various health research hits the mass media, I’ll select some to analyze and offer a view on these findings through the lens of a physician.

My product reviews have been less fun and more poorly reviewed.  Notably, when she read my post about laptop keyboard covers, the Darwinian Dr-ess stuck out her tongue and yelled “Boring!”.  So I’m not really going to focus on this area for now.

My posts about the homefront, including my gardening efforts, are just plain fun, and I’ll give little updates about house and garden projects from time to time.  I feel that they provide an important counterpoint to my posts on money and medicine. Read below for an update on my my beloved jelly fig plants.

I have a feeling that 2019 is going to be a pivotal and exciting year for The Darwinian Doctor blog.  I’m happy you are coming along for the ride!

— TDD

The figs cuttings are bearing fruit!

For those of you who have been following along with my experiment in cultivating new fig trees from cuttings, I’ve got some exciting news.

Not only are my fig cuttings alive and well, but they’re actually starting to produce figs of their own!

These were my jelly fig tree cuttings from August 2018.

After about 8 months of growth, they’re developing into fully functional mini-fig trees!

They have sent off a number of shoots from the central branches, and these shoots have healthy large green leaves doing plenty of photosynthesis.  They’ve even developed a few clusters of fruit! So far, these fruits are quite hard and are not ripening, but I’m taking this as a really great sign overall.  If the cuttings have enough energy to devote to fruit production, they must be doing OK.

Here is a picture of them now in early spring!

Only time will tell if I end up with viable fig trees after all is said and done.  While there has been nice growth of leaves and side branches, I’m not noticing much increase in the length or thickness of the central branch which forms the trunk.  Will these eventually develop into true trees, or will they always be tiny dwarf figs plants?

The mystery continues, stay tuned!

— TDD

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