Scraps

My virtual commonplace book & cabinet of curiosities.

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Vintage bar border with curved detail at the center
  • I thought my character flaws were all the times I made mistakes.

    Turns out my character flaw was believing I could be perfect.

    Read more: untitled post 156079242
  • Therapeutic weeding. The front bed is overrun with witch grass because I wasn’t well enough to garden last year, but reclaiming it one patch at a time. Excited about our first sea holly – it’s a variety called Hobbit.

    Runner grass surrounding plants in the garden bed. My rainboot, a narrow widger, and a sea holly are also visible.
    Mulch surrounding sea holly, sage, and russian sage with tall grass growing beyond.
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  • Fence of treated wood opens on a patch of blue and white wildflowers in our backyard under a gray cloudy sky.
    Blue and white wildflowers with a mown path leading to a fence of treated wood.

    I really prefer British style fences, but with the wildflowers blooming I am coming around to ours.

    Read more: untitled post 156078927
  • Laptop with yellow hobbit hole wallpaper. An edison bulb lamp sheds a dim golden glow on a goddess vase filled with pens. The workspace is otherwise shrouded in darkness.

    Have I mentioned I set up a desk in our living room? I’ve been using it since January or February. It was especially nice when the severe winter weather meant I couldn’t use the studio.

    Read more: untitled post 156078924
  • Black and white photograph of a blood lab with materials for drawing blood arranged in a grid on the wall.

    New doctor new bloodwork. I’ll be writing about chronic illness soon so I thought I’d take a photo while I waited for the nurse.

    Read more: untitled post 156078921
  • A tiny oak tree sprouting from an acorn in a mason jar full of water.

    We found this beauty when we were weeding the mulch under the jungle gym. A fascinating science project to see how an acorn sprouts into a mighty oak.

    Read more: untitled post 156078918
  • A pile of weeds from the wildflower area of our backyard and a green nitrile glove.

    This is the first year I’ve been well enough to really spend time weeding the wildflower area of our garden. Years past I’ve let the seeds go truly wild and only pulled a few “mean dandelions” (you know, the spiky ones) and weeds I suspected might be poisonous. This year I’m enjoying sitting among the bachelor buttons and pulling up plants that are less desirable so we have fewer weedy seedlings competing with wildflowers next year.

    Read more: untitled post 156078915
  • “Hey, I work with college students often. Do you know what brings their attention back to the surface after years of Zoom classes, Generative AI cheating, and smart phone usage? 

    Zines. Freaking zines. You put a zine in an undergraduate’s hands and say “Someone like you made this. You could make this. All you need is some found images, paper, scissors/glue, and your own imagination. No chatgpt necessary.” 

    They light up, every single time, without fail. They start to recognize how little Generative AI serves them in the long run. They’ve called zines “Anti-AI” to my face and gleefully showed me their first zines with thought, intention, and inventiveness. 

    Critical thinking isn’t dead in the land of zines. It’s thriving. Academia has to pivot, as much as I loathe that corporate term.”

    Abigail Schleifer via Substack Notes

    See also: What Are Zines? by Abigail Schleifer

    Read more: untitled post 156078879
  • “The work of writing a book is not the selection of suitable words,” writes John Higgs. “The work is the task of engaging another mind. It is a constant dance between understanding your subject and understanding how a future reader will react to it – a reader you can never know, but which you still have to intuit.”

    via Austin Kleon (in the context of discussing AI)

    Source

    Read more: untitled post 156078877
  • Blue Love-in-a-Mist ethereal flowers with delicate leaves and spiraling center that transforms into a seed pod. These flowers evoke fairyland to me.

    Love-in-a-Mist are some of my favorite self seeders.

    As suggested in my Chaos Gardening zine.

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