Solstice Greetings

Happy Summer Solstice to northern hemisphere blogistas, and Happy Winter Solstice to blogistas reading in Oz and NZ. and any other southern hemisphere readers I don't know of.

Longest day here, and wildflowers everywhere. They're tiny so you need to keep looking.

Here's vetch, finished flowering and now making tiny seedpods. I expect they're related to edible peas, same vining tendrils and small flowers succeeded by pods.

I forget the name of this creeper, which showed up a few years ago and has brightened the ground cover with a lovely green. I like that it climbs right over the top of the ground cover. Right now it's in yellow bloom for a few days. 

Sorrel everywhere, edible where they haven't sprayed it, a dark sour flavor great in salads. I've never had enough to make soup but I believe you can.

The summer Austenfest continues, with the BBC Emma. 

Low budget costumes, wonderful sets, great acting, except I think Harriet Smith and Emma should have exchanged roles. Mainly because though Romola Garai is a powerful actress, she's not up to the subtleties of Emma, and I think Louise Dylan, who plays Harriet, would be a very good Emma.  

Mr Woodhouse brilliantly played by Michael Gambon, Miss Bates likewise by Tamsin Greig.  You can tell who understands Austen and who's following a script.

I'm only partway through, since this is a four episode TV series. With subtitles, I'm happy to say.  And I may adjust my attitude as I see the last two episodes.

Then I will return the DVDs to the library where I found recently someone's put a box for collecting donated eyeglasses.

I'll add these prescription sunglasses to the collection. I used to donate old glasses through my eye doctor but the person who was doing it had to stop temporarily for Covid reasons. 

Meanwhile these will be useful. My eye doctor told me years ago he'd done voluntary work in Haiti, fitting people with the nearest to their required correction, free of charge.

I was doubtful, after Handsome Partner died, whether his glasses would be useful. He had no vision in one eye, so clear glass, and a massive correction in the other. Astonishing that he did great scientific research at a lab bench with such limited sight.  But I wondered could his specs be useful for anyone else.

Eye doctor, who knew him, explained to me that the glasses would be prized. With that correction even in one eye, it could make the difference between employed active and helpless. He was happy to take all of them.

Speaking of happy to receive, my next door neighbor is delighted with his little jar of plum jam, and as soon as I handed it over, ran for the muffin to toast for it.

Happy day all around.

Movie for grown up kids, and other pursuits

After the excitement and stress lately I thought I'd catch a nice unstressful movie so here it is

It was lovely, funny, you knew nobody would come out traumatized, and the voice of Paddington was just right. Diffident, polite, a bit of a Bertie Wooster, very appealing. Maybe I'll watch more kid stuff. Not Disney though, they're sadistic, deliberately upsetting and off-putting. 

I know too many people my age who first saw Snow White at about age 6 and were terrorized by it. Well meaning parents taking them to see it as a treat, after said children had experienced bombing, war terror, rationing which was close to starvation. 

To this day I can't eat a red apple because of the poisoned one. And the wicked queen coming after the little girl, like our imagined enemy invaders. Nooooo.  

And don't get me started on the Wizard of Oz, with the writing in the sky, which meant death coming from the sky to my mind. I can't sit through it. 

And the witch under the house like a bomb casualty, I can't bear to think of that scene, or the melting. It took three tries to type that last word. That's about Hiroshima. Never assume young children are unaware of world events.

Moving on from the inferno of my childhood trauma, I'm reading Emma with my Tiny Email Book group. We started Mansfield park, but the other member said nah, not into it, let's do Emma instead. The beauty of a tiny group! Emma it is.

I usually look for an illustration of what I'm reading, more interesting for you and might be a lure to reading or rereading yourself. 

I don't write about books I don't like or respect, of which I start a lot, somebody went to a lot of trouble to write them, after all.  But some books I do love are not always well served by marketing.

Here's a bodice ripper version of Emma, created I guess to present it as an olde worlde romance novel.

And here's an inadvertently comic one just asking for a caption. Please offer one in your comments.

And here's what looks like Emma taking a rest while dragging a bag of laundry to the washer's house.

This one plays it safe with historically authentic silhouettes and maybe wallpaper, but still thinks it's all about coupling, rather than the brilliant comedy of manners it is.

 

It's still a rattling good novel, great set up for how it unfolds. And whatever cover it comes in, highly recommended.