The 72 microseasons and other discoveries

Yesterday was eventful. I discovered the Japanese concept of 72 seasons in the year, rather than four. On the grounds that four was an inadequate number to convey the reality of the year, it's a division of the year into about five day sections. 

No sooner seen than signed onto, I looked out a book I made years ago, to start my own nature journal entries. This is a sentence or two a day at most, enough to mark sightings.

Front cover

Back cover

 Colored pages

Some quick and no doubt inaccurate calculation tells me I can fit two microseasons on each side of a page, filling the whole book. So here's the start, in silver pen. My year started yesterday, why not. Season one, with five planner entries, season two in waiting.

The binding is a Japanese stab binding, seemed appropriate, and the cover is an old print on canvas with stenciling over a monotype. 

Various colored pages. And it finally has a  project. It's a nature journal made simple, my speed right now.

Then the mail brought the rest of my lovely fabric for spring and summer wear, winter sewing.  

Lovely patterns, just what I was looking for. Firecracker Fabrics sale.

Look at the drape there. I'm going to be so well dressed I'll charge $ to talk to me. How smug I look!

I checked the lengths the old fashioned way -- nose tip to outstretched finger and thumb. It's a handy way to measure when you don't have a tape measure right there. You measure the distance between your nose tip and outstretched index finger and thumb, as if holding the fabric. 

That's your personal base unit, and it's pretty close to being your inseam measurement, too, handy to know. Mine, nose tip to finger tip's 27", inseam a shade more. Then you do it moving along the fabric, then do the math to determine your total yardage. And they gave me a few extra inches on the yellow material, always a nice touch by good fabric sellers. The batik's pretty exact.

On other paths of discovery, I found out several things about our mystery plant. One is that I'm even more absent minded than I realized, and should compensate with labeling my planting. 

The other thing I found out, when I lifted out the mystery to see what it was growing from, and found I'd also broken another seedling which was  about to break ground, was that these were the sprouting  moringa  plants I'd started from seed. Blurry picture, best I could do, but you can see the seed

I'd been watching  the wrong pot to see if they were growing! And used another handy filled pot which I thought was empty of occupants, to transplant the philodendron. This happened to be the one the moringa    seeds were actually in. Doh!  Note to self: a simple label could have averted this little debacle.

Anyway the baby moringa is now in the pot I was watching, and now I know the seeds are germinating nicely. I'd only planted a couple to see if they were viable. They are, so I will plant a couple more. And label them. I will label them. I will.