Last delphinium and last of the 36 freebies in the ground between the sage and the marjoram in Undercherry.
Last libertia in the ground. Hoping it gets better light and catches up with the libertia already in, rather shaded by a fern. The two should form a wee trinity with the crocosmia when they've grown big, bring a bit of structure to that side of the border to balance the euphorbia
Last of the dierama into Smolsneuk. There's three now in that wee patch of soil among the Welsh poppies & whatnot. One that went in first is thriving, one is pretty weak looking, and this one came out in between, so we'll see how they go. I think it's 4-5 years till flowers but.
Oh, I missed out the full view of Tupsbeard Knot with its new libertia. By the time they're big, I guess we might have a bit more sapling shape to the cherry in front with them and the apple at the back.
Bit of garden twine in the iron frame yesterday and a shoot of the clematis Montana brought over and tied in to let it start claiming that too this year. And then I cross my fingers for flowers next spring.
I think the lilies may be Grand Cru. Tempted to put them into Langshaw next year. Wondering if they'd still flower at the same time in the soil or if we'd get them more in time with the ones in Birchby. Not sure which I'd prefer.
Sweet alyssums into Langshaw beside the sweet Williams, between the spiraea and the hydrangea. Annuals seem a good idea there, with a bunch of bluebells and some tulips in that strip. And more bulbs may go in this autumn.
Fugitive strawberry in Smolsneuk, I think.
And some kind of thistle, I believe, that's been hanging out there for a few years without flowering.
First Japanese anemone in Smolsneuk, and this bee was straight in there.
Nom nom nom.
She came back for seconds when I moved in for a close up too.
Canes means plans.
The Big HH in Laburnumley is heavy with flowers. I may try a wee harvest of the berries this year, as they're edible. I had a wee taste last year but I forget what they were like.
And lastly the enormous tatties. The parents of these didn't flower last year, so I'm gonna have to check back in my journal, see when I first spotted the shoots. I suspect they're actually ready by now since they've been in forever.
They are insanely huge. The longest stalk is up to my chin if you straighten it a bit. If it was straightened *totally* it might well make my full height, or not far off it at least.
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I need to go to fuckin bed now, like a normal person, but I may have Some Tweeting to do later about how I think I've inadvertently redeemed Ptolemy's bugfuck bonkers map of Scotland. Well, not *entirely*, but to a pretty significant extent for the Lowlands at least.
OK, so this is Ptolemy's map of Scotland. As you may notice, it's... a little wonky. Like WTAF levels of wonky, bent over at a 90º angle (and then some) like someone came at it from behind, stuck a knee in its back & snapped its frickin spine like a supersoldier getting creative.
It's absolutely batshit. You only have to look at it with the remotest idea of what Scotland looks like to think "wildly inaccurate."
BUT...
OK, so here's a good site with a translation of the textual instructions Ptolemy gave for drawing this madness: topostext.org/work.php?work_…
The message: take your civility centrism out to the desert, put a bullet in the back of its head & bury it in a shallow grave. "Decency" will not prevail when fascism's unleashed just because it's decency. Bourgeois propriety is exactly what the fascists are radicalised against.
Fascism is fuelled by ressentiment and related pathologies. Like narcissism (because arguably it *is* a mode of narcissism, narcissism on a societal level,) when challenged by realities you'd expect to make a reasonable person see reason, that shit just *powers the denial*.
More people didn't vote for Trump *despite* the shambolic shitshow he's made of the last four years. They voted for him--and I include in this *his murderous mishandling of Covid-19*--because of that. Because it causes *narcissistic injury* that makes them double down & lash out.
I hate the prequels, but I will consider them worth it for McGregor being given a chance to do Kenobi again but, fingers crossed, in a series with good stories & a proper Star Wars visual style. Like rough drafts I can bin from my memory, needed on the way to a finished product.
Him being ages with me, I find the tale of him making the lightsaber noises with his mouth during the fights just so identifiable with, & you can see the love he put into it. I've always been gutted for him that he got a childhood dream only to have it turn out... like it did.
All I want for Christmas 2021 is one nine episode season that sneakily divides into three distinct stories, three episodes per story, ideally with flashbacks woven through retelling the backstory so it functions as a covert reboot of the prequels.
If Sally wasn't a brunching centrist fuckin tool, she'd take her friend Bob aside & have a friendly fuckin word with him about him being a fascist. If she was anywhere near open enough to get through to him, you can 100% guarantee he'd break the friendship off, him being a cunt.
Sally, the establishment Dem, whenever anyone asks her pointedly about her friendship with fascist Bob:
"I think he's ready to go. I believe it now." Even if one extends Trump the most charitable reading--that the gobshite vpidly sought to posture a calming stance while not alienating the fash--it's worth saying that there's no way he'll back out of the leadership role he's now in.
I mean, it's a real fuckin stretch being that charitable, but I don't wanna underestimate just how much his narcissism can and does drive him to just speak without actual intent at all, without real thought, just opening his gob & spewing extemporized drivel that pushes buttons.
I can kinda imagine, tbh, that even as he was voicing his basic desire for his bootboys to await his command, he's so lacking in self-awareness he'd actually think this was him telling them to chill as required, just "cunningly" finding a way to say that while keeping them sweet.
All you really need to know, AFAIC, fiction-wise, practically speaking is past perfect versus simple past and the idea of "continuous" that gives us, like, simple present versus present continuous.
(In fiction, present continuous can read kinda floaty & distanced, which can be put to good effect, but because of that it gets used to slather a contrived air of import in lieu of actual effective import, & that can grow old as fast as every sentence being its own paragraph.)
The thing about continuous is that "is running" conjures a state whereas "runs" conjures an action, & if you conjure everything as a series of states, surprise surprise, all the action takes on a sort of static quality, a detached ruminative air as of a tableaux being mused upon.