Ashes (Ch3)

Finally got round to proof-reading this, long after I typed it and about nine months after it was written, mainly on the grounds that I need to upload it *before* uploading "Think Only This of Me" if it is ever to get any eyeballs on it at all. Twenty Years After fics get pitifully few hits anyway, but since there is no fandom whatsoever for "The Yellow Poppy" the only scenario in which anyone is ever likely even to glance at this is if they are reading something else of mine and are checking my other recent works. Although nobody is likely to get as far as chapter 3 anyway on that basis... I did a review swap on fanfiction.net and got a review on chapter 1 which said that, despite all my efforts on rewriting the start, it felt as if the reader was being "expositioned at", which is incredibly depressing: I *cannot* do any more rewriting on this, so am just stuck with a non-working story :-(

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Chapter 3 — Revelation

The long room was panelled in white and gilt, and Valentine de Trélan, seated at an escritoire at the far end, wore a gown of a dusky rose colour; not draperies of the modern fashion in Paris that left very little to the imagination, nor a daringly slim gown such as that worn by Marthe de Céligny, but a sedate dress more suited to one her age. Only she did not look any older.

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First tomatoes - without seeds

The first of my towel-tomatoes are ready to harvest, about a month earlier than last year thanks to the warm spring. On the other hand, just as happened last year, these first fruits are all seedless. Very tasty, with an intense burst of tomato flavour, but useless in terms of reproduction. However, the plants did eventually begin producing fertile fruits last year, so I'm not panicking at the moment.

(These plants are of course the linear descendants of those same 'seedless' tomato bushes, so the genetic potential is inevitably there; I was hoping that by having chosen to save seed from fruits that were bursting with them I would avoid inadvertently 'selecting for' seedlessness, but evidently not. Of course if one could only produce a reliably seed-free tomato it might be of commercial value for the picky eaters of this world... if only you could find a way of breeding from it!)


The coriander and pink Linaria that I sowed last week have both now germinated -- a considerable relief in the case of the Linaria, which really was black dust from the bottom of the envelope.