Jackie spent the early part of the day completing her weeding of the Brick Circle and continuing along the Brick Path. I began my later stint of dead heading and pulling up weeds by gathering up her refuse and adding it to the compost bins.
Before eventually settling down at my computer I staggered around with my camera.
I photographed a variety of our clematises – on the patio, in the Rose Garden, and on the kitchen wall.
Wallflowers and miniature kniphofias blend well in the Pond Bed.
Roses include New Dawn on the Palm Bed;
in the Rose Garden Madame Alfred Carrière, Lady Emma Hamilton; the third picture containing the red Love Knot, pansies, Alan Titchmarsh, and Just Joey;
and finally the red climber along the Shady Path.
Day lilies appear on the corner of Margery’s Bed and in the Dragon Bed.
This evening we all dined on oven fish, chips, and onion rings; garden peas, pickled onions and gherkins, with with Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Waters Edge Moldovan Pinot Grigio, part of Becky and Ian’s Father’s Day selection.
As is customary with very small babies, Ellie took some time to feel comfortable with me. She has now taken to asking to sit on my lap by smiling, extending her hand, and taking mine in a firm grip; it has only been two days since she has been happy with neither of the ladies remaining in the room with us.
Maybe it was because yesterday was Father’s Day that she chose to spend a long session on my lap after dinner. On the other hand she can be quite crafty in her attempts to avoid bedtime.
I can’t these days make a good fist of the ride a cock horse game, but we gave it a go before
she began to chew my fingers.
Everything within reach now ends up between teeth. So it was with Louisa’s Father’s Day card grabbed from the mantelpiece. It dried out well overnight and only a couple of nibbled corners.
Not only am I now unable to access the Tiled Gallery without being forced into the basic one, but those earlier posts which I have adopted successfully have lost the tiled pictures. It looks as if I am going to have to redo those groups.
As a tester I have converted the next two I hadn’t done before:
If they work I will go back to the others and convert the image galleries.
This evening we all dined on Red Chilli’s excellent takeaway fare with which Jackie, Dillon, and I all drank Cobra. Main meals included, chicken makhani, chicken biriani, chicken dhansak, and lamb passanda; various rices and peshwari nan were shared.
Today I finished reading ‘A Raw Youth’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky in the two volume Limited Editions Club set, no. 1124 of 2000, translated by Constance Garnett, with an introduction by Konstantin Mochulsky, and illustrated with wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg, whose signature it bears.
Mochulsky begins his introduction by saying that “Because of its structural flaws, ‘A Raw Youth’ has been dismissed by some critics as an inferior work of Dostoevsky’s”. I agree with his estimate that the work is important for the themes familiar to as today as they were to Mochulsky when this edition was published.
Charles Dickens would have identified with the early life of the narrator, the self-styled “raw youth”, who grew up with no knowledge of his father and spends his coming of age striving to know and to share love with the man he now knows to be him.
The family is just one aspect of fractured society. The consequences of illegitimate birth, of which there were many resulting from extramarital relationships, and how these differentiate from those resulting from the marriage; children reared by substitute parents in differing circumstances; poor health; questionable morals; gambling; the position of religion; competition; trust – these are issues occupying the minds of many today. (Roughly 50% of all marriages in England today end in divorce, with breakdown of home life for the children, and reconstituted families)
Dostoevsky’s descriptive powers and the natural fluidity of his dialogue; his insightful characterisation, dramatic pace and tight time scale are well conveyed. The secret letter is a good device to add a sense of mystery. The work builds nicely to its dramatic finale and ties all loose ends in its conclusion
One irritating aspect is the author’s repetitive statements about detail he would come to later, keeping me on the lookout for when that would be. I considered myself fortunate that I could understand the amount of French dialogue, but presume that this reflects intellectual backgrounds of the protagonists.
I was grateful for the comprehensive cast list, ‘The Chief Characters’ given at the beginning of each volume.
I found the informative introduction most useful, especially in putting this novel in the context of Dostoevsky’s more famous works.
The artist’s sculptural illustrations with their mastery of light and shade, characterisation, and emotional content are faithful to the text.
Each of the three parts has a frontispiece
The titles of these full page woodcuts appear in the gallery.
Dillon returned home this morning and was able to join us for his favourite dinner of superlative bangers and creamy mash; firm carrots, cauliflower and broccoli, and meaty gravy with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Malbec.
I appreciate the choice was tempting fate. I met the same problems, but at least I am learning what is happening so I don’t spend ages repeating the processes.
That was enough for me. I spent the afternoon reading more of Dostoevsky.
Having on previous occasions watched the recorded highlights of the first two days of the first Ashes Test match at Edgbaston I watched the third day after dinner. This was interrupted and finally shortened by rain.
The said dinner consisted of roast chicken thighs; crisp croquette potatoes; crunchy carrots; firm Brussels sprouts and broccoli; tender green beans, and meaty gravy, with which I drank more of the Malbec and Jackie finished the Blume.
I have ignored recent Jetpack communication from WP because I don’t understand it and am afraid to get involved with it. Until now, this seems to have been a good decision judging by the number of problems other bloggers seem to be having with it.
I came across a new problem. The block of photographs I had used successfully in this original post were inaccessible. After wrestling for an hour or so with this mystery I somehow discovered that Jetpack was now demanding that I sign up to Stripe – whatever that may be – and pay for the use of images from the pub’s promotional material, which had been part of my effort to publicise the excellent, innovative, venue. Fortunately we had visited again a few weeks later when Jackie had taken several pictures. I substituted some of these.
In doing so, I found all but one of the pictures missing from
I was able to recover these photographs from my iMac Photos, but even that presented its own difficulty. Try as I might I could not discover how to include what is now the last owl thatch image without it being cropped by WP – in fact I almost left it off altogether, which should tell you something. It only worked when I made it a separate tiled gallery of its own.
In the meantime my stints in nature’s gym incorporated two separate periods of weeding and dead heading, and only after finishing my rounds with the above problems, did I wander around with my camera.
Now I have given up. I cannot select the tiled gallery without the images being cropped. So the following pictures can only be seen in full when the gallery is accessed. Maybe they will sort this out, but I have had enough for one day.
The first of these two images of the Pond Bed is the view from our dining room window.
Some of our later blooming daily lilies are now flourishing.
Wedding Day rose, cropped in the second image can be seen on its are along the brick path.
Further along the brick path, on either side of the arch, can be seen more Cordyline Australis trees which, until recent clearances, have not been easily visible.
Here are two shots of the red climber along the Shady Path.
This rose coming into its own in the Dragon Bed was another of Jackie’s very cheap buys.
This veilchenblau rambler was bought very cheaply from an open day at Ferns Lodge in Cottagers Lane.
As entitled in the gallery Absolutely Fabulous, and Mamma Mia all enhance the Rose Garden.
This evening we dined on tender roast lamb; crisp croquette potatoes; firm Brussels sprouts, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, soft green beans, and meaty gravy with which Jackie finished the Bangla and I drank Trivento Reserve Malbec 2021.
I won’t bore readers with the nature of the difficulties – you have heard it all before – save to say that Wayback Machine was once more helpful and that I had almost finished the work on the Scarecrow Festival one with its three dozen pictures, messed it up, and had to start again.
Late this afternoon Jackie and I took a forest drive.
A pony and her foal grazed on the verge of Forest Road.
On another soporific day there was not much more sign of life until we
reached Rockford Common where ponies and a foal were on their way to climb up the tarmac path beside the sand pit, first a valuable commercial quarry,
now a playground for children;
and a challenge for others to keep their feet ascending the crumbling sandhill.
Jackie watched a friendly foal advancing on a visitor’s phone.
At North Gorley soporific ponies seemed to seek coolth from a gentle breeze sweeping across the green – it was, however, rather a warm current.
The llama log that has never moved in all the years we have been driving past it, and claimed by Jackie as her own, is impervious to the heat.
On our return home we collected a Red Chilli Takeaway meal, with which Jackie and I both drank Bangla beer, and Flo and Ellie didn’t, the latter settling for pasanda sauce and mango chutney on crisp poppadoms.
I headed off the worst of the rising heat with an early dead heading session this morning, before Jackie and I set off for a sultry forest drive.
Beside dappled Holmsley Passage a splendid stand of Foxgloves could be spied through the trees. I wonder whether that ice warning sign will now be redundant.
The driver of ponies and trap on the equally brindled Bisterne Close pulled over for Jackie to drive past.
Marbled banks sloped on either side of Beechwood Lane where rooftop chimneys were discerned among lush undergrowth and a mossy log decayed on the verge.
Shade at the corner of Burley Lawn is at a premium on such a day.
A pair of ponies spooked by passing traffic risked losing their spot when they nipped across Chapel Lane and took their chances on the streaked tarmac.
Another troop, including a foal, heading for shelter were to be disappointed,
and forced to wait in the hope of chances of returns.
Further along stippled Chapel Lane cattle made do with the verge, occasionally spilling over to upset tourist traffic.
In addition to continuing his meticulous clearance of the gravel paths,
Martin this morning loaded his van with the bulk of the garden rubbish and took it away for us. He will do the same next week.
With the help of Wayback Machine I reinserted three missing pictures and added a header to the following post:
Somewhat assuaged by the merry tinkle of the water fountain and the joyful chirping of sweeter birdsong, but neither by the drone of bees nor of power tools nor of overhead aircraft, my dead heading this morning focussed on the prolific plants resident in the rose garden desperate for a haircut.
Longer term readers will remember that we converted our garage into a library, part of which became a utility room which possessed one strip light which has spent years annoyingly flickering on and off
requiring supplements of trailing sockets draped, dangling, everywhere like lametta lacking sparkle.
Today, Ben Renouf, of Abre Electrical provided us with a safer, less unsightly arrangement. Beginning with replacing a double switch that had served both the strip light and outside lights around the house, with a single one for the outside and moving the double to the other side of the kitchen door and serving
two new strips – one newly fitted for library and one the new utility room replacement.
New sockets are now in place in the utility room and on the wall outside the kitchen.
Ben worked steadily, efficiently and finished the task first thing this afternoon.
It remained for me to remove all the extraneous gubbins, pile them onto the library table, and wonder what to do with them.
This evening we dined on roast chicken and duck pieces; crisp roast potatoes, some of which were soft and sweet; crunchy carrots; firm Brussels sprouts; tender green beans, and tasty gravy, with which Jackie drank Rueda Blume 2021, and I drank more of the Malbec.
On another very hot day Jackie drove me to the dentist this morning for a satisfactory routine check up. She waited in the car park. I knew it would be a short session. She said she would expect me in half an hour. In the event I was seen early. The session lasted ten minutes. I returned to the car at precisely my appointment time. The car was empty. Jackie had nipped off to Tesco in New Milton. I stood in the sunshine for ten more minutes, until she returned thinking she was early.
the spiky cordyline Australis, the white flowers of our eucalyptus, the yellow bottle brush plant, and the pendulous red lamps of the Chilean Lantern tree.
Ubiquitous day lilies proliferate.
Early this evening we all met Danni, Elizabeth, Ella and Jack to enjoy Mr Pink’s fish and chips on the beach at Milford on Sea, and a very good time was had by all.
