Richard Gorny

Best winter since 2013.

Patterns are few, but each expresses itself in endless variations.
To simplify, we say that in many cases those variations are random, but the closer we look, the more order we see in them.
For instance, the fallen leaves mentioned before create an imperfect tesselation, as well as they stack (two patterns). Tree size, shape of the leaves, plant species, drynes, wind, slope, season, and many other factors influence the way they cover the ground. Change one factor, and they will look different.

Welcome to Permies, Andrew :)

Here is a good video that explains wedge technique I was talking about.

Message acknowledged.

If you don't have a froe, I think that what you mostly need are wedges. Traditionally these were wooden ones, from hard wood (like oak), you can make them yourself. Steel wedges are even better, especially for stubborn logs.

I would use very straight logs, no knots, and go with a grain. Just hitting a wedge with a mallet or a hammer. Places where the log has a crack or something similar is a good place to start.

Then in the end you need to flatten the boards. For that, there is a hand tool called drawknife (or draw knife?).

Christiane Ratzka wrote:I just soaked some Hosta seeds for a couple days, have now put them in moist soil on a tray. It’s literally freezing outside. I was wondering if I could pop the tray out there for a couple of hours for stratification. Does anyone know if that would work?

Welcome to permies!

As far as I know hosta seeds require a couple of weeks, not hours, of stratification.

You can also use a method called "winter sowing", in a transparent container with soil, left outside until spring.

A lot of good suggestions have already been made, let me add a few:

- in your settings, potatoes might not be the best choice of growies, since they require quite a big container to get a one-dinner-harvest. There are better choices for growing on windowsill, starting from culinary herbs, through chillies, micro-dwarf tomatoes, chives, etc.

- if you insist on growing potatoes, wise thing would be to stick to super early varieties that grow fast and are smaller in size.

- thinking out of the box, I would examine possibilities to grow potatoes actually outside the appartment - on any roof available in vicinity, someone's lawn, or I would join a community garden in my city perhaps. All you need is to ask someone "may I place this bucket here?" - and there you go, you have an instant growing place ;)

- there is a separate category of potato growing techniques - growing them from seeds. So called True Potato Seeds (TPS) can be sown in a very small pot, and at the end of the season you will get a few very small potatoes :) Normally, you would use these as seed potatoes in the following year, but they are perfectly edible of course.

A picture shows early variety Charlotte, grown in 5 gallon bucket, in the city, on the terrace.

Yes, this is just some highlights of over 700 recordings just from one camera over the period of a year, that include animals, me+family+friends, and trespassers too (mostly mushroom collectors).
Deer is most abundant, some wild boars, hare, fox, badger, birds and insects. Also, not included in this short film, cats, dogs, squirrels and moose. Reptiles, amphibians, bats and fishes didn't make it to the movie ;)
EDIT: in this area I'm walking my cat on a leach :D the cat is deadly to the small creatures and birds.