Palimpsest

Palimpsest is one of my favourite words but you don't get an opportunity to throw it around in everyday conversation.
A palimpsest is something that bears traces of what was written on it before. I learnt it in connection with the Beowulf manuscript, years ago.
I reuse my plant labels - not because I'm saving the planet but just because I'm a cheapskate - by scrubbing off last year's pencil marks with a microfibre sponge, so they are palimpsests, with the traces of last year's crops beneath the hoped-for produce of this year.
There is a right way and a wrong way to write on plant labels and my husband does it wrong, as you can see from last year's writing. But at least he does it at all. It took years of training, going from no labels at all ("I know what I planted in that bed"), to grudging blank labels, to those with the merest hint of information ("carrots").
He says I don't know why you bother, they only cost a quid for fifty