Miscellaneous things
May. 17th, 2026 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerIt's a killer allergy season here. My allergies are usually so mild that it takes me a few days to realize I'm feeling a bit fuzzy. Not this time! It's brutal. So instead of anything thoughtful and coherent, here's a grab-bag of stuff.
My plants are such delights. The local native plant sales offer most plants in three-inch pots, which are so much easier on both the plants and the gardener. Very excited about the new little heucheras and 'De la Mina' lilac verbena (right now a leafy little twig maybe six inches high), which--based on my neighbor's specimen--should flower pretty much year-round. The red-flowering buckwheat is tiny now, but I'm looking forward to its lovely evergreen presence and future flowers. And the lacy phacelia I planted from seed are now doing great! From a distance, it looks like a haze of lavender-colored caterpillars sitting on top of frilly greenery. The more established plants are starting to settle in properly and grow; I'm going to have to cut back the 'Pozo Blue' sages hard later this year now that they've suddenly shot up to four feet. It's also nice not having to water the established plants more than every two or three weeks! I'm not the only one happy with the flowers: I've seen tons of bees, butterflies, and other unidentifiable-by-me but welcome bugs.
On the edible side, I'm experimenting with one little chickpea plant, and planted only one Armenian cucumber this year instead of four. I just made myself a home-grown kale and sorrel salad. The breba fig crop is forming, and the mandarin oranges seem to number in the millions even after millions more pea-sized fruits dropped (expecting a larger June drop to thin it further).
Now I just have to shift a few more tons of rocks...
I've started watching The Other Bennet Sister, though slowly since the allergies are making it hard to focus on things I haven't seen before. Nice to see 1995-Mary back as Mrs. Hill! In the meantime, I'm spacing it out with rewatches of the 1995 P&P miniseries, the 1980 P&P miniseries (which I really should write about sometime), and Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical, which is a filmed version of a stage musical from 2020 with very catchy songs. Though it's a little disturbing to be humming along to Mr. Collins trying to decide which Bennet daughter to choose!
And finally, this "Writing Lessons" essay by Film Crit Hulk has several interesting bits, but especially this:
Anyway, there's some things. Here's hoping that the grass stops flinging pollen around and the wind dies down.
My plants are such delights. The local native plant sales offer most plants in three-inch pots, which are so much easier on both the plants and the gardener. Very excited about the new little heucheras and 'De la Mina' lilac verbena (right now a leafy little twig maybe six inches high), which--based on my neighbor's specimen--should flower pretty much year-round. The red-flowering buckwheat is tiny now, but I'm looking forward to its lovely evergreen presence and future flowers. And the lacy phacelia I planted from seed are now doing great! From a distance, it looks like a haze of lavender-colored caterpillars sitting on top of frilly greenery. The more established plants are starting to settle in properly and grow; I'm going to have to cut back the 'Pozo Blue' sages hard later this year now that they've suddenly shot up to four feet. It's also nice not having to water the established plants more than every two or three weeks! I'm not the only one happy with the flowers: I've seen tons of bees, butterflies, and other unidentifiable-by-me but welcome bugs.
On the edible side, I'm experimenting with one little chickpea plant, and planted only one Armenian cucumber this year instead of four. I just made myself a home-grown kale and sorrel salad. The breba fig crop is forming, and the mandarin oranges seem to number in the millions even after millions more pea-sized fruits dropped (expecting a larger June drop to thin it further).
Now I just have to shift a few more tons of rocks...
I've started watching The Other Bennet Sister, though slowly since the allergies are making it hard to focus on things I haven't seen before. Nice to see 1995-Mary back as Mrs. Hill! In the meantime, I'm spacing it out with rewatches of the 1995 P&P miniseries, the 1980 P&P miniseries (which I really should write about sometime), and Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical, which is a filmed version of a stage musical from 2020 with very catchy songs. Though it's a little disturbing to be humming along to Mr. Collins trying to decide which Bennet daughter to choose!
And finally, this "Writing Lessons" essay by Film Crit Hulk has several interesting bits, but especially this:
...there’s this fun intermediary step we do when we’re working out scenes. After we’ve talked about the scene goals and where the characters end up, then we do “The Info Version” of the scene. That’s where we work out the shape of the scene in the dialogue, but instead of wasting time coming up with the witty verbosity of language, we write things like, “I’m mad because you did that thing,” and then “I’m defensive, because of this element of my character” and this let’s us track the conversation, get to the catharsis point, and figure out how the scene works overall. Then because writing is like ironing. And we go back and come up with the actual lines later. You know, the ones that make it feel organic, that speak to the character’s voices, that are funny or biting, and that make the subtext clear, but not on the nose. The lines that are the way of saying it without saying it.
Anyway, there's some things. Here's hoping that the grass stops flinging pollen around and the wind dies down.