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.

It's Friday already again, and I think it's time for some pictures to make the week end with a bit of colour, especially as the weather forecast for here is mumbling something about "cloudy, and not much chance for sun". Which is a pity, because there's several spots of crocus flowers hanging out in our garden, looking like this:



and they are only waiting for the sun to shine down on them to open up to something like this:


but totally refuse to do so unless there is, you know, proper sunshine for more than five minutes.

There's also some iris, however, and these are undaunted by clouds. They just pop up one day and stand there in all their blue glory:


Totally undaunted by anything the weather might throw at them. When we had a bout of snow on Monday and Tuesday, and everything was suddenly all white (including our willow fence),


the iris still went "What? So there's snow, do you want me to care?"


Pretty little iris. I like your attitude.

It's finally raining again here, and there is a good amount of water coming down gradually - very, very much appreciated by all the plants. (Plus it means I might soon be able to finish washing my fleeces!) The cat does not feel as happy as I do about the rain, though - for her, it means a sleepy day, as she prefers not to get wet if she can help it. No umbrella for her - though she could theoretically accompany me, under my umbrella, when I'll walk to the post office later today to send off some parcels.

Speaking of outside and the garden, we recently had the pleasure of meeting this guy:


It's a ladybird beetle larva, doing what they do best: eating aphids. In this case, sitting on a (wild) poppy bud. Judging from the amount of aphids still left, we could have used about twenty more of its kind, though!

Today's a public holiday here in Germany, so you're not getting a proper blog post - just garden pictures instead:

 ...blooming lilies...

... blooming poppy...


and the Ecuador Purple Chili is doing its thing, too.

It's hot outside, by the way... and the sun is shining like there's no tomorrow. Once it has cooled off a little, I have gardening work to look forward to, but for now? It's time to relax, and have a coffee, and some strawberries, and a nice quiet afternoon.