The Wordsmith's Forge

I decided to share some pictures of things that are holding my interest today.


It's garden planning time!  :D

These are some of the paper catalogs that I'm using to order things for spring planting season.  They are Pinetree Garden Seeds, Prairie Moon, and Select Seeds if you're curious what I'm getting.




This ArtBin is the larger of my two seed storage containers.  Most of the contents represent several years' worth of "I don't need 200 plants of this species."  (A packet I bought this spring says it contains over 4,000 seeds.)  One of my spring projects will be planting the stuff from before 2024, since most seeds only keep for a few years.  And at that, the big bag of little bluestem didn't even fit in here.




This bookshelf is part of a bookcase that holds a collection of titles along the lines of "In case of civilization collapse, pull here to jumpstart."  It's a hodgepodge of science, crafts, history, and survival skills.  Not pictured here, because I am still reading it, is the very snarky but very useful How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler. For a more comprehensive list, see "The Seeds of Civilization."




Birdfeeders.  Some of these are foggy because I'm shooting through the bathroom window.

An unoccupied birdfeeder. Who knows, a bird might land at any moment.




Oh hey, a bird! This one is a sparrow, probably a song sparrow.




A starling eats from this suet feeder.




A house sparrow (upper right) and a male downy woodpecker (center left) perch above the fly-through feeder.




A male cardinal takes over the fly-through feeder.




The male downy woodpecker decamps from the fly-through feeder to hang on the suet feeder. A red spot on the head indicates a male.




I couldn't resist the classic "watching paint dry" so I decided to smear-test the three pens that I'm using on plant labels.  I do in fact have milkweed seeds to plant, but I can't do that today because the potting soil is frozen solid.

This is a Sharpie permanent marker with a water-jug label.




The Sharpie permanent marker did not smear, which is interesting because I've definitely smeared that stuff in the past.




This is the Sharpie Oil Paint Pen.




The Sharpie Oil Paint Pen did not smear.




This is the Craft Smart paint pen.




Here is the Craft Smart label fresh.




This label did smear.




Here is a closeup of the smear.




To another classic, "watching grass grow," I added "watching snow / ice melt."

Looking east across the house yard, you can see patches of melting snow over the grass.




A surprising amount of green remains in the grass. Used to be, it turned brown in fall and stayed that way until spring.




As the snow melts (or sublimes), it becomes crunchy and pitted, sprinkled with bits of bark shed from the trees.




Watching ice melt.  Or not.  This block of ice came out of a water dish several days ago and has not shrunk at all.  It just lies there looking very shiny.




Treacherous footing ahead. Between the cistern garden and the strip garden, the snow has packed down into a thick slab of ice. I went back out later to throw icemelt on it.




Not a photo, but I'm also focusing on my goals for 2025.


So what's holding your interest today?