Discover New Worlds...

I removed the dahlia tubers from their cool spot by the back door over the weekend, but didn't get to putting them in dirt until today.

Last year I put them straight into large containers that they lived in all summer. They grew taller than me and had to have supports constructed around them so they wouldn't fall over. I put a freeze cloth over them to keep them blooming late into the fall, and between them and a few pots of cannas they transformed our back deck into an amazing jungle.

This year I have too many overwintering plants already, plus more dahila tubers than last year, and I do not have space for giant containers indoors, let alone indoors under high-powered grow lights. So the dahlias went into little containers from which they will be transplanted to a garden in... two months. Which surely will not be enough time for them to turn into beanstalks that I regret starting early!

( pictures )

More snow today?? Daphne thinks we have enough already.

So March! The full moon is in two days, which means the lantern festival and the year of the horse starts for real. This is definitely going to be the year I practice speaking!

I took the SuperChinese placement test, and here is how I interpreted my results.
Pronunciation: good
Vocabulary: okay
Reading speed: okay
Grammar: poor, very poor

A basic level of grammar is necessary to make sentences that communicate meaning, and I think I got that far and then stopped paying attention, or focused on other things, like comprehension. If I can use SuperChinese to improve my grammar, I'm in. I want to share abstract stories, not only communicate about tangible experiences.

It's funny that speaking practice is both so encouraging and so humbling: my sentences are certainly understandable (yay!) but they aren't correct (...yeah).

It appears that tomorrow is the last day of February. What were my goals this month? Am I still working on goals for the year? (The fact that I don't know seems to indicate either I am not yet successful, or I am already so successful I don't even think about it.) (I'm sure it's the latter, right?)

I haven't finished my Grade 1 Chinese textbooks, but in my defense I added math, so it's four textbooks per grade instead of two. They're really fun. I remember that reading them the first time is how I learned the word for "equals". (In that I still remember it, rather than just seeing it and forgetting it, which is apparently what I did with "greater than" and "less than".)

I've been in the 75fluent discord a bit, and a lot of people are using the SuperChinese app. I looked back through the scores of Chinese learning apps I've tried, and that's not one of them, so I feel like I should check it out. (My Chinese learning app knowledge is now, after just a few years, completely outdated. That's pretty neat.)

2024 was the year it got easier to listen, and 2025 was the year it got easier to write. Dare I decide that 2026 will be the year it gets easier to speak?

Last night I saw a video about how, when reading a book, the first chapter is the hardest and it gets immediately easier after that. So I started reading the first Chinese book I found in my kindle library that was A) new to me, and B) not a graded reader. (I love graded readers, but after you've read hundreds of them, they're a bit repetitive. By design, of course.) It seems to be about good study habits for high schoolers. I don't remember how this is in my library, but the first chapter was pretty interesting, so I assume that's why.)

I did not diamond paint except to start the irises, but I did photograph a bunch of legos, make some graphics, and handwrite some cool zines for beagoldfish. Plus wrote stories for chenqing_100!

I also sowed a bunch of seeds in containers now covered by snow, and looked at enough of my tubers to determine that 1) the dahlias look largely viable, and 2) there was probably some layering of cold in my canna storage, because the ones in the top box are trying to sprout while the ones in the bottom box are soundly asleep. (That's reasonable; they were by the back door where the floor is pretty cold, but the pipes above the floor run warm for the dog's comfort.)

♥ zines for beagoldfish: started

♥ video for RPM: started, kind of, in that I figured out how to do it probably

♥ winter sowing: finished! all 22 containers are out and covered with snow thanks to the blizzard so it's an authentic experience for them

also I finished Liu Cixin's To Hold Up The Sky anthology, thank goodness because the last story was particularly positive and relatable, but it did make me laugh that he says he's often asked, "what makes it Chinese science fiction?" and literally after the first story I was like, "have you read it."

Surely it can't be that hard to write a few sentences about the day, right? Especially since all evidence suggests once I start I will continue. It's like speaking practice: I want to do it, and I'll definitely start tomorrow, when I will have more energy, be more awake, be smarter and more capable, and therefore do it better or at least give it the effort it deserves.

( putting it off )

( pet party )

( plant news )

Do you want to guess whether I've done anything for Record Producing Month? The odds are in your favor if you base your guess on historical trends. Also, beagoldfish ends this week, but I really felt like last week's Lego Reunion Dinner was my finale. What to do.

Maybe I could make a handwritten Chinese zine that I record myself reading aloud to a bunch of seeds. (This is a joke based on my strategies for motivating myself to do stuff I put off, in case that ended up being more obscure than I intended.)

Also, comments on the Plums xkcd are filled with great poetry.