Night sky journal
Pages here change slowly, usually on rainy weekends, and that suits houseplants just fine.
The hardest part was the fiddly bits, which took two weekends on its own. Some of the older notes about houseplants are out of date, but I keep them as a record of what I believed one Thursday in January.
I return to it every couple of months, fix one small thing, and leave the rest for later. The design of this page is as bare as I could make it so that it will still work on a slow connection, much like a tin of pencils. The most useful thing I learned from someone at the library was to take a photograph before taking anything apart. It still has a slight wobble, but I have decided it is a reminder of how it was made.
How it went
- Live with it for a few weeks
- Tidy up and write notes
- Fix whatever broke
- Gather materials and tools
- Sketch it on paper first
Notes
Feel free to borrow anything useful about houseplants from this site, no need to ask. It took most of June and advice from a neighbour before the result looked like something I would show anyone. The first version, made on a long weekend in 2026, was half the size, and most of the work since has been quiet improvement. I kept a short log by the window while working on it, mostly so I would remember which screws went where.
The cost was mostly time; the materials came to less than a good bottle of wine, thanks to a swap group in Aarhus. I try to answer every letter, whether it comes from Aarhus or further away, even if it takes longer than I would like.
Thanks for stopping by; everything here was made quietly, mostly at a borrowed workbench. The plan changed twice, mostly because of the finish and partly because of the measuring.
Notes on this sit in the same box as a folding table and an old notebook. Halfway through I changed my mind about the whole layout, and I am glad I did. A second attempt, in June 2021, went smoothly, for once.
I took photographs at every stage on the balcony, which turned out to be the best record. Back in 2021, I finally got it to the point where the whole thing cost less than expected.