Julia

♥ Plant update
Two of the succulents whose names I can't remember are flowering. That's neat; didn't know they did that. The white-and-purple fuchsia has so many more buds. I have not given the vines a trellis. The yucca is probably not dead yet.

+Winter sowing project week 2: the snow has melted off the top of the containers but it's still around freezing or below at night, so I think that counts toward cold stratification.
+Dahlia tubers: somehow I ended up with 22 pots of dahlia tubers, which is weird because that's how many containers of winter sown seeds I have also.

...after looking up the number 22, apparently numerology likes it. A master number not reduced to a single digit, specifically the master builder, signifying the ability to turn grand dreams into reality through practical execution. Great! Gardens are off to an excellent start, then.

I don't have any lights set up for the dahlias yet, but that's not actually a problem until they put their heads above the soil, so. Take your time, little tubers. I'll probably move the cannas out to the garage to keep them from getting any ideas, but I need to put one of the temperature sensors with them so I can make sure they don't freeze.

♥ Language and writing
The SuperChinese app is great at catching the j/zh distinction, which I'm lazy about, along with zhe/zhi, ditto. It couldn't care less about tones, but luckily I found "Speak Chinese: Learn Mandarin," which is an app with a clunky name and a free chatbot that's a stickler for both tones and grammar. Thanks, chatbot that puts in a period every time I pause. I appreciate you pretending you don't know what I'm talking about when I use the wrong tone.

I was going to write a Chinese fic about Spring Festival this month, but I wrote an English followup to Apparently instead and then made a series called Back to School, because of the time travel. I don't know how much I'll write of it, but it's fun to not feel like I'm "wasting" study time. Probably because all the speaking practice feels like progress.

Or the reading. Those BLCUP readers are finally easy after years of sitting on the shelf. I actually bought Andy Weir's Hail Mary in Chinese, not because I think I can read it now, but because it's something new to aim for. (I now know Mo Dao Zu Shi too well for it to serve as a benchmark, ha ha. I was listening to the audio drama yesterday and I was like, "Surely I've always understood this.")

♥ March challenges
communal_creators time only mini event March 22 - 28
(sign-ups not open yet, sign up for a daily amount of time to create stuff and log it)

no_true_pair Four-Character Mini-Challenge March 26 - 31
(sign-ups open at the link above, list four characters and create to prompts for their interactions)

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."