Mesembryanthemum success!
9 June 2021 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeAfter all the assorted dramas with my first-ever attempt to grow mesembryanthemums from the handful of seeds left at the bottom of a packet (and their total vulnerability to slugs, cold weather, hot weather, rain, etc.) I woke up this morning to a pink sun-ray flower in one of the pots I'd spent so much time transporting in and out of the bathroom during cold weather, taking in every night, etc. All that work has paid off in spectacular fashion :-)
There was a bright yellow one a few days ago from randomly-scattered seed in another pot, and there are more coming. The yellow flower is going over a bit now, but I'm leaving it in the hopes that it will set seed for next year; the seed packet says they are only annuals (and 'half-hardy' at that -- I'd have said they were not at all hardy, but the plant in question managed to survive everything that killed off its contemporaries!)
And I have a pot of ripening strawberries :-)
I have the introductory section of my Hertha's pregnancy storyline almost (yet again, I'm still struggling with the final sentence of the scene) completed. We've already established that she wants children and indeed considers husbands potentially in the light of a necessary means to that end, so she is unambiguously happy about it at the moment, irrespective of her relationship (or otherwise) with Raoul; this is *her* child, potentially a Chagny family child, but in no sense a 'token of love' or an attempt, successful or otherwise, to mend a marriage. In fact I suspect she feels Raoul really had very little to do with it ;-p
It does occur to me to wonder just how wise it was of me to introduce a pregnancy into the plot, given that it's a subject of which I know very little while some at least of my readers are apt to have first-hand experience (unlike, say, Arctic survival!) However, it was a major part of the inspiration for this fic in the first place in order to shift the pull of loyalties between the characters, and differentiate it at least a little from the run-of-the-mill POTO retellings -- and Hertha as narrator isn't likely to feel it proper to go any more closely into the practical details of carrying a child than into the process of conceiving one. Thank heaven for Victorian narrative conventions, which spare us the endless round of fanfic pregnancy rituals (much of which, I suspect, is about as representative of real experience as fanfic sexual activity).
There was a bright yellow one a few days ago from randomly-scattered seed in another pot, and there are more coming. The yellow flower is going over a bit now, but I'm leaving it in the hopes that it will set seed for next year; the seed packet says they are only annuals (and 'half-hardy' at that -- I'd have said they were not at all hardy, but the plant in question managed to survive everything that killed off its contemporaries!)
And I have a pot of ripening strawberries :-)
I have the introductory section of my Hertha's pregnancy storyline almost (yet again, I'm still struggling with the final sentence of the scene) completed. We've already established that she wants children and indeed considers husbands potentially in the light of a necessary means to that end, so she is unambiguously happy about it at the moment, irrespective of her relationship (or otherwise) with Raoul; this is *her* child, potentially a Chagny family child, but in no sense a 'token of love' or an attempt, successful or otherwise, to mend a marriage. In fact I suspect she feels Raoul really had very little to do with it ;-p
It does occur to me to wonder just how wise it was of me to introduce a pregnancy into the plot, given that it's a subject of which I know very little while some at least of my readers are apt to have first-hand experience (unlike, say, Arctic survival!) However, it was a major part of the inspiration for this fic in the first place in order to shift the pull of loyalties between the characters, and differentiate it at least a little from the run-of-the-mill POTO retellings -- and Hertha as narrator isn't likely to feel it proper to go any more closely into the practical details of carrying a child than into the process of conceiving one. Thank heaven for Victorian narrative conventions, which spare us the endless round of fanfic pregnancy rituals (much of which, I suspect, is about as representative of real experience as fanfic sexual activity).
no subject
Date: 2021-06-09 08:56 pm (UTC)