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An Unscheduled Night Off
So I got back from home tower practise* and found this in my Twitter feed:
tessagratton In Which My Friend Sends a Piece of God in a Pink Envelope: http://tinyurl.com/232y7g3 @mstiefvater @robinmckinley
And I figure if your sins** have caught you out, you might as well get a free guest-post substitute out of it.*** Furthermore, how often is a hellgoddess† truly granted her rightful divinity?†† This is obviously a moment that should be commemorated as widely as possible.†††
PS: Tessa, I hate your fingernails. Because I am horribly jealous. I stopped bothering with make up way early.‡ But I would have liked to play with nail varnish. I can’t: I’m allergic to the stuff. It makes my fingernails fall off.‡‡ Curses.
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* I have to ring a quarter peal the day after tomorrow. Somebody. Please. Shoot me. Just a nice little tranquillizer-dart gun. You want to do it Sunday morning, so someone has an opportunity to discover my unconscious body and find some other eighth ringer by 5 o’clock in the afternoon.
** I still haven’t decided if that should have been ‘who’ or ‘whom’. As you will notice by its strange indecipherability. Pretend it’s like Vina in The Menagerie.^ It will be whatever you want it to be.
^ Pathetically geeky ST: The Original reference. Menopause brain has wiped out most of my higher learning. Star Trek, however, remains.
*** It’s also here: http://tessagratton.livejournal.com/563891.html I’m dubious about how many times a link will copy and paste and stay linky.
† You will note the pink envelope. I almost sent her a red one in acknowledgement of her position on the arc of unusual public personas, but I decided that no, the hellgoddess should be manifest in this case.
†† Mind you, I read it and went ‘eeep.’ Although I read her original BEAUTY post and went ‘double eep.’ Possibly quadruple eep. I’m also very impressed that she had the generosity of spirit to be willing to read anything that contained a so obviously drippy useless heroine with a serious skin condition and pink horns.
††† Although I wish to point out that I am never weird, as regular readers of this blog already know.^
^ Except on days beginning with M, T, W, F, or S, and between the hours of midnight and 11:59 pm.
‡ I’m creeped out by the choice of photo that seems to be everybody’s favourite for copying, which is from the wedding I went to two years ago in which I am wearing lipstick. Ewwww. Okay, my fault for posting it, but how was I to know that would be the one?
‡‡ Speaking of ewwwww.
Night off (nearly)
It’s been a long day and I have three guest blogs pending . . . all of which need something done to them before I can use them. SIIIIIIIGH. But it’s still Wednesday, and I need a night off. So let’s have a few arbitrary hellhound and Hampshire countryside photos, and then I think I might try the going to bed early* thing again.
Because Wordpress is an evil ratbag from Orthanc’s subbasement, I’m not going to be able to attach individual text to the photo where it belongs** so I’ll just mutter a bit here before I get started. Remember Peter’s poem Meme?*** This is the field. And at the end of June the crop should be nearly twice this height—that’s the lack of rain. The ground is friable rock, and I’m not finding complaining about the battering heat as funny as I did a fortnight ago.
And some day I’m going to get a photo of Darkness doing his dropping-down-a-gear and nailing Chaos trick—but today wasn’t the day either. One of the problems is that it happens so fast. Unless I’m already in the middle of taking a photo I’ll probably miss it—the damn camera takes a couple of seconds to recover. Running hellhounds circumnavigate the planet in seconds.
The last photo is just . . . one of my favourite views. You’ve had this shot before at different times of year and I guarantee you’ll get it again.
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* Okay, earlier
** No, since you ask, I haven’t tried to figure out the caption widget. But I don’t want captions. I want text to stick where I put it.
*** http://www.peterdickinson.com/TheWeir.html It’s the last poem on the page, so keep scrolling.
GODS, DEVILS, IMPS AND MINIONS OF ENTROPY BUT I HATE WORDPRESS. NO, THERE DOESN’T SEEM TO BE ANYTHING I CAN DO ABOUT THE THREE ASTERISKS SEVENTEEN POINT TWO MILES ABOVE THE REST OF THE FOOTNOTE. WHAT THE SWEET BLEEDING SOMETHING OR OTHER ARE ALL THE FRELLING UPDATES ABOUT WHEN THE WORDPRESS ADMIN CAN’T FIX A FEW BASICS ABOUT THE DANGLEFRABBING PHOTO HANDLING?
Mottisfont
Was it last year or the year before I gave you a Mottisfont post? Maybe both. Well, here’s another one. You can kind of figure there’s going to be a Mottisfont post most years: National Collection of Old Roses? Hellgoddess? . . . Any questions? *
Given the lateness of the hour and the fact that Wordpress will doolally my text anyway, I’m going to declare the following self-explanatory. If any of them aren’t, post questions to the forum and I’ll answer. ** I do wish to state however that I had no idea that Mottisfont’s new flyer was colour-coded for my new t-shirt. I also wish to draw your attention to my belt buckle and my All Stars. Cathy emailed me photos of All Stars available in my size this year at Jack’s Shoes around the corner from Wiscon–you know, the store I bought nineteen pairs of All Stars in the year I attended Wiscon, that Wiscon also being where I met her blah um I forget number of years ago***; she’s a regular attendee–and I chose these and she nobly brought them over. Pink. Yes. Flowers. Yes.# Oh, and my hat says Swan Bells. Western Australia.##
And I didn’t buy any new rosebushes. No! Not one! We’d had a fast whirl around the sales area and we were actually leaving, me empty-handed and triumphant . . . and was frelling shanghaied by one at the gate. Damn. I should have bought her too. But I didn’t. Damn.
* http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-mottisfont.htm
** Probably. Unless they’re to do with sequels to SUNSHINE.
*** Long before the blog was a twinkle in Merrilee’s eye. Or a flanged mace in her armoured fist.
# It’s going to be really hard to pretend they’re roses however. They have only four petals. But gold glitter makes up for a lot.
## http://www.thebelltower.com.au/
Pink Things
I was going to do an Ask Robin tonight but I was waylaid by pink things. Mmmmm.
Remember I told you that Sunday mornings after service ring I go to the florist’s, and she’s fallen into the deliciously decadent habit of giving me things she’d throw out otherwise, because they’re too beat up or blown to sell? Some of them it’s perfectly true only last a day or so. But some of them I totally luck out on. For example. Speaking of (pink) peonies:
I wouldn’t dream of buying cut peonies; they cost a bomb. No, a bomb and a half. But she GAVE me these. And they’ve lasted all week.
[Okay. Now we enter into the surreal world of Wordpress' ideas about relocating text and photos. Sigh. Brace yourselves.]
First two photos of Mme Pierre Oger, who is yet another favourite rose. She’s in the new big brick SUV-repelling planter in front of the house, which I should try to get a photo of the entirety of, but at present it’s busy being laced into a snug leafy wodge by the frelling sweet peas which are refusing to climb up their nice bamboo frame, guys, will you please pay ATTENTION. 
If you look closely, you can see some sweet peas ignoring their bamboo canes in the background.
I have a thing for pale-pink candy-striped roses. Mme Gregoire Staechlin, whom you have often seen before, is one end of the candy-stripe spectrum; Mme Pierre is the other. Peter Beales describes her as ‘of moderate vigour’ which is to say she’s a total frail weeping heroine type. Well, she’s a Bourbon, they’re almost all cranky, one way or another. But if you feed her like crazy and generally pet her and tell her how lovely she is, she may surprise you. And part of her charm is her willowness. The flowers themselves are almost round and the petals are nearly translucent: on the delicate plant that she usually is the whole show is ethereal. If elves grew roses, they would grow Mme Pierre.
And here she is again. 
[Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah--trying to fill up enough space that Wordpress will leave text location alone--blah blah blah blah di blah blah blah di blah. Blah. Blah. Di blah blah.]
Okay, it’s probably not going to work. So anyway the next two photos, wherever they are, are of Ayrshire Splendens.
Who is, as you will immediately notice, another candy-striper. 
I’ve put the two together in the hopes that proximity will let you observe that while they’re both small, pale pink, roundish, and striped, they’re not all that similar after all. Mme Pierre is nearly globular; Ayrshire is more cupped. And Ayrshire is not only a rambler, although she is slim and wiry, she’s clearly a tough old thing, and not a fainting maiden; and her flowers don’t have that ethereal quality: the petals are thicker. She’ll also get to twenty foot; Mme Pierre tops out at five or six.
She also has an unusual scent. I do have a few almost-scentless roses; scent is very high on my list but it’s not a deal breaker. (The rose just to the right of Ayrshire is nearly scent-free, but I’ll post photos of her some day soon and you either will or won’t immediately see why I had to have her anyway.) But Ayrshire’s isn’t like anything else I know. It’s not at all a common rosy scent–as Mme Pierre’s is, for example.
And now, for something completely different:
Good, huh?
It’s years ago now that I first saw that Dualit, the world’s best toasters, had started making them in colours. Including PINK. At that point I already had a perfectly good original shiny stainless-steel Dualit. I had no excuse. There was a shop in Mauncester that sold coloured Dualits, including pink. I used to go stare at them occasionally.
And then thanks to MEnopause and other things beginning with ME I more or less gave up eating toast. [Insert wailing and rending of garments here.] So when Peter’s toaster broke, I gave him mine. I promise I had no ulterior motives. No, really. But that was last winter when the Aga was on, and if I decided to live dangerously and have a piece of toast, I had the Aga, which makes divine toast, it’s just slower, and sweeping the crumbs out is more of a nuisance.
But then summer came barrelling down upon us and I’ve broken with tradition and turned the Aga off . . . just in time for an assault of house guests. Most normal people like a nice piece of toast in the mornings.
I may forgive them for eating toast in front of me, for having provided the excuse to buy my pink toaster.
ROSES
I feel a two-fer coming on. Wordpress starts making creaking noises after about six photos. And this time of year, we’re swooping into the rosesrosesrosesROSES season. For those of us that way inclined. This Is Only The Beginning.
One of my doubtless undeserved, not to mention surprising, successes this year is that Souvenir de la Malmasion is mostly coming out in spite of the extremely Souvenir-annoying weather we’ve been having, which is to say lots of dry, which she loves, punctuated by vicious prolonged downpours which she HATES and she usually hates them worse when she’s been having a nice time and has got all relaxed and comfy. 
This is why you put up with her though: She’s amazing. And her scent is even more amazing. Her scent is A M A Z I N G. I had a branch break off* so I thriftily clipped off all the flowerheads, open, unopen, and in between, and piled them into a vase indoors and five days later she’s still making the kitchen smell gorgeous. You forget–I forget–how strong the perfume of some of the old roses is. I don’t think any of the modern ones can touch her, or Fantin, or Mme Isaac. I grow Gertrude Jekyll, who is famous for being The Only Modern Rose Worth Making Potpourri Out of, and she is very good. But she’s not a patch on Souvenir. Or Fantin, Or Mme Isaac. **
And speaking of bizarre and unmerited successes, this is Louis IV, a notorious cranky, flimsy prima donna, prone to extravagant disease and sudden death. I put her in a pot first year at the cottage and . . . five years later while she’s not exactly hulking she’s an extremely good doer and no trouble at all, given the odd handful of flower food. I swear that contrary to the experts, the best thing to do with a weedy little wuss is put her in a pot. I’ve got more and more weedy little wusses in pots: my third Dr Jamain, for example, is in a pot, and this is the first time EVER, including the additional two or three that died on me at the old house, that she’s even half looked like thriving. I’ll have photos of her later. . . .
Mme Alfred Carriere, doing her by-now-patented launching thirty foot into the air trick. That’s the UK first/US second storey (plus attic) of my semi-detached neighbour that she’s using as a springboard.
Mme Gregoire Staechlin, who is almost too pretty to live. She shares Mme Alfred’s wall. It gets kind of intense on that wall sometimes . . .
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* &^%$£”!!!!!!!!!
** WORDPRESS. GAAAAAAAAAH. Okay. The first three photos are Souvenir. The fourth, red one is Louis IV. The next slightly peachy white one is Mme Alfred. The last, pink one is Mme Gregoire. IT DOESN’T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE THIS in admin–the text FITS WITH THE PHOTOS in admin–but I don’t dare jerk it around or Wordpress will sulk and start DELETING photos. I have been here before.
