First of all, here's how the red-and-yellow tulips look today:


They are lovely, and they seem to be really robust - several years ago, a friend brought us ten red-yellow bulbs, ten black ones and ten white ones. There's one small white tulip left from that planting, the black ones have all disappeared by now, but the red-and-yellow ones are going so strong that I even had enough bulbs for a second cluster somewhere else in the garden last year. (I'm a little sad about the white and black ones. I really liked them!)

In other news, I've been busy working on one project which I cannot disclose yet, plus preparing for both the IRM (drawing closer and closer) and the Internationaler Museumstag, taking place on the third Sunday in May (so this year it's May 22). I'll be in Darmstadt on that day, demonstrating really early textile techniques - think neolithic times. This is a bit earlier than my normal focus time, so I'm extra excited and happy to do something different this time around, and have been doing some preparation work for it. (That will include taking a few photographs for the programme and PR, which is on my to-do-list for tomorrow.) Some more prep work is also planned - I'll have to harvest a few samples of plants that were used for these proto-textiles, but this is a task better done nearer to the actual event. Speaking of which - the programme for the day in the Landesmuseum Darmstadt is not online yet, but I've had a sneak peek, and I can tell you that it is chock full of interesting things!

I'm busy preparing for the IRM in two weeks (my, how the time flies by!), so it's making a list, checking it twice, sorting things and getting all kinds of odds and ends into place.

While I'm doing this, maybe you'd enjoy some more nice flowers from our garden?


It's really lovely to see all the colours coming out, and things blooming merrily everywhere. The only sad thing - there's next to no bees around, only the odd bumble-bee here or there, and I always feel like there should be many, many more of them...

Here's a picture of some tulips in our garden*, slowly getting ready for their big day:


And a stack of things that I hope you will find interesting:

Here's a story of a remarkable woman - Dorothy Bennett.

Also from Jstor Daily: an article about losing proficiency in your first language through learning a second one. The article mostly focusses on war prisoners, as they tend to be the extreme cases, and it was a really interesting read for me. (I certainly know the symptom of not finding the word I'm looking for in German sometimes, and it's good to know that this is perfectly normal.)

The British Library has digitised all fourteen (fourteen!) of their Roman de la Rose manuscripts, and they are now available online.

Springtime also means lots of birds doing springtimey bird stuff. Some of these guys might not be the fluffy-feathered feelgood folks you expect them to be, though. Case in point? The Great Tit. They can be really aggressive and murderous, as that article tells us.

Finally, there's a mystery bone tool over on the ossamenta blog, and Lena is looking for ideas of what it might be. Maybe you have an idea?

 
* I made said garden stinky, by the way. On the bag it says "all-natural fertiliser". What that means is "cow shit compressed into pellets". It smells accordingly... but I'm hoping the plants will grow better this year, having been treated to the stinky stuff.

Spring is the time of year when new things spring up - and it is fun to be part of this. Case in point number one:

[caption id="attachment_2333" align="alignnone" width="640"] Basil seeds, sprouting. Yay basil! (The basil is not called Ecuador Purple, by the way. That's the chili plant seeds in the other half of the saucer.


And what would basil be without tomatoes? Boring, right? So, case in point number two:

[caption id="attachment_2332" align="alignnone" width="640"] Tomato seedlings, fresh out of the soil. Two different varieties in the two saucer halves - Benarys Gartenfreude is the German name of Gardener's Delight, which are small, sweet cherry tomatoes.


Last year was not a very good one for tomatoes here, and I'm really hoping this year will be better. Now while the seedlings grow there's a few weeks of time left to get the garden beds outside into a semblance of order, and (which is the most important thing this year) apply some fertiliser, as they are all pretty much emptied out of plant nutrients, judging from how things grew (or did not grow) last year.

For the tomato seedlings, though, there are interesting times ahead... a few years ago, when the seedlings had just sprouted their first pair of real leaves, I accidentally forgot to water them before leaving for the whole day. The seedlings stood in the wintergarden, and the day was sunny, so of course it became really, really hot in there. The result? I came home to all of the seedlings lying flat on the dry soil, looking very sad and dehydrated. I did the obvious then and flooded them with water, hoping for the best - and the best certainly happened: almost all of the plants recovered. The drought did have an ongoing effect, though, as they all developed very thick, solid stems and a good root system, possibly in an effort to get and store more water for the future.

So from that time onward, I give the little plants an intentional drought when they are in the first-real-leaves stage, resulting in strong plants with strong, sturdy stems. At least that's what I get. I have no idea whether they'd turn out the same without the dry streak, but since I've been happy with the results with it, I'll just stick with the system. If you do something similar, or if you try this at home, I'd love to hear about your results!

Spring is really coming now, and the garden looks like it. Here's picture proof:


These little wood squills (Blaustern in German) are out about everywhere, and in full bloom by now.

Their larger cousins are also showing off their colours:

 

... and so are the grape hyacinths. These are also abundantly blooming here and there in the garden, making lovely blue spots.


And of course, if somebody is outside taking photographs, a certain furry creature has to watch that everything is being done correctly:


Well. Thank you so much, helpful little cat.

Gillian, my partner-in-Beastly-crime, has a new book coming up. It's her latest academic work, published by Peter Lang, titled "History and Fiction. Writers, their Research, Worlds and Stories".

The book looks at how writers understand and use history in their fiction, including world building. It focusses on genre fiction, so if you've always been wondering how history might influence science fiction novels... here's a book for you.

I'm all excited for her, and I especially like how the cover turned out...



...because I had a hand in it. As in I made the photo. And the Most Patient Husband of Them All also had a hand in it, even more literally, as it is his hand you can see doing the colouring. Which means he got to be a cover model, though he never planned on it!