"Sir Isumbras at the Ford", D.K. Broster

I was surprised to hear that D.K. Broster's novels had been originally regarded as rip-offs of Baroness Orczy (with the exception of the historical French setting, they really have very little in common), but in "Sir Isumbras at the Ford" we actually do get a Scarlet-Pimpernel-style rescue mission taking place, even if the victim is a small boy who has been kidnapped into post-Revolutionary France rather than an innocent in danger of the guillotine!

It has been a long time since I read this book, mainly because the account of the Quiberon disaster (something that, one feels, would never have featured in Orczy's optimistic adventures) haunted me for years as a child. On this occasion I consciously picked it up again as a result of having read The Marquis of Carabas, which features an equally (probably more so, because Sabatini goes into the damning disagreement and back-biting among the commanders, while Broster gives us only the exhaustion and dwindling hope of those under their command) devastating version of Quiberon. That experience reminded me of the existence of "Sir Isumbras".( Much discussion and spoilers for many Broster novels )

More compost

Bought some more compost and potted up the last of my towel-tomatoes (six pots in total -- all that I physically have room for, and that was a bit of a squeeze). I have one surviving seedling left over, plus a runt in the same pot that never took off, and the spare Roma tomato to be given away.

Sowed the last of the pink Swan River daisy seed (packet appears to be labelled 2022?), which may or may not do anything -- probably not :-(

Surprisingly, the 'old' commercial coriander seed is very belatedly germinating, but the saved seed from last year is not -- planted up some more of that too, and some more rocket round the base of the most mature plants (having weeded the well-developed corn-marigolds and shoo-fly plants out of that pot).

Sowed the tentatively identified seed from last year's wildflower trough (I think some of the leftover buckwheat husk mixture I shook in this year has actually germinated as well, unless it was just that those flowers managed to set and shed seed into the old compost last year!) -- the mystery 'pink Linaria' and Gypsophila vaccaria and Gypsophila elegans.

What germinates out of all that rubbish around the repotted rudbeckia turns out to be yet more calendulas, demonstrating once again their bizarre capacity for smuggling their large and distinctive seeds through all human detection :p

Cream?

( Cream California poppies )

The nasturtiums are all coming out too, in a range of oranges and yellows -- the poached-egg plants that were sown at the same time are not doing particularly well and certainly not flowering. I have planted some of the saved nasturtium seed from last year, rather belatedly, to see how it would compare.

The 'one surviving sage plant' has been attempting to flower again without great success and has now died or is dying, looking very sick alongside the self-seeded replacement which I transplanted back into the same pot -- their lifespan is clearly limited.