Apparently Soviet Bagheera is female :-)
( Read more... )

I acquired some more ground-plums (the windfall plums that one picks up from the ground; it beggars belief for me that the general public will happily strip the blackberries from alongside the path before they are properly ready, so that nobody gets to enjoy them properly, and yet is prepared to let ripe plums that fall onto that same path rot, get trodden into the ground, and otherwise go to waste, either because they don't know what they are or because they are terrified of 'dirt') and some windfall apples, and had to spend the evening cooking in order to combat the swarm of fruit-flies that were staggering around the kitchen. (The flies were already there but made a bee-line for any slightly damaged fruit!)

I ended up making a German plum cake (not terribly successful with these small wild plums, as the stones cling to the flesh and they cannot be halved -- in the end I just squeezed most of the stones out of the skins), a plum and apple crumble, and a sponge cake (unrelated), while peeling and chopping the remaining apples to put in the freezer as an emergency measure. It's just as well that I failed to pick any elderberries this year, although rather a shame...


These are the yellow plums from one of the other trees, which may be mirabelles -- but the red plums are the same size. It's because they are so small that they are able to fall from the tree without significant damage; commercial plums would split open after dropping from that height.

The sweet peas are all now finally over, with the plants dried up and no longer green (along with the pods, of which I found three or four in the end; it will be interesting to see if anything grows from them and whether it rivals the first-generation seed!) So I was finally able to clear all the pots, which has freed up a lot of space. The problem was previously that some of the plants had died while at least one was still flowering, but that the stems were so tangled together that I simply couldn't tell which pots could be safely disposed of without killing off the live buds!

( Swan River daisies )

( Basil )

The kale that was pricked out is not doing nearly so well as the seedlings that were left in the original (with no drainage holes, since it was supposed to live on the windowsill) tub, which is mainly because they are being eaten by caterpillars still :-(

The beetroot on the windowsill (of which I now have four plus a runt) badly need potting up as well, but I don't have the energy left for that...

How can it be *this* difficult to translate four lines of poetry? :-(

( Rhyme and reason )

(Meanwhile I'm listening to an interview with the lyricist, Leonid Derbenov, who is cheerfully talking about turning out four or five new songs in appropriate styles on command...)

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Translators' humour: https://russievirtuelle.com/textes/humour/traducteurs.htm
(from someone who has translated a *lot* of Russian lyrics, including the entirety of the musical Собака на сене featuring Mikhail Boyarsky's song -- but hasn't attempted this one!)

1. Donne-moi d'abord le contexte.

2. Il me faut le contexte.

3. Non, c'est pas possible de traduire ce mot-là sans le contexte, donne-le moi enfin!
( Read more... )

I pricked out some of my rocket -- which has just about recovered from the caterpillar, though I found another caterpillar this morning on one of my newly-pricked-out pots of kale -- and coriander, which was getting very crowded even though I have been thinning it for culinary use. I have to say there wasn't a lot of root on the seedlings that I did remove...

I saw a ladybird this afternoon, and hope that it might show some interest in the blackfly, but even if it does produce larvae that will be far too little, too late. I strongly suspect the ants of 'farming' the blackfly on purpose :-(

( Rudbeckia and beetroot )
I am currently on strong antibiotics again due to another infected wound, which means adhering to a six-hour pill schedule -- and, as previously, does wonders for the regularity of my eating habits, since the pills have to be taken "on an empty stomach" at least one hour before food or two hours after. Which means, in effect, no eating between meals, and the meals have to take place at fairly evenly-spaced intervals.( The concerning thing is that it takes an outside imperative... )

I pricked out three pots of assorted kale seedlings, and redistributed the remainder a little in the freed space in the pot; they are of course all horribly leggy due to having started life on the kitchen windowsill. The beetroot that I planted at the same time failed to germinate anything but poppies and chickweed, so I emptied the last of the matter remaining in the paper bag into the tub a few days ago, and think I *may* now have something with a reddish stem developing (even if the first thing that came up from the second attempt was undoubtedly a double-fronded California poppy!)


( Tomatoes )

I also repotted the larger chilli, which needed it. Both chillies are noew flowering nicely.

Finally found the huge fat caterpillar that has been ravaging my new rocket and leaving frass everywhere -- I hope that was the only one, but am not confident. It has put paid to my intention to harvest rocket for my salad today, at any rate.

Something has also eaten the tops off one end of my kale seedlings after I left them outdoors overnight, but I think that may be snails. The very old stump of kale that I harvested the dried seed-pods from to sow this batch resolutely refused to die after being left indoors unwatered for a week or so in the heat in order to dry out the compost so I could empty the pot, and started putting out new feathery leaves, so I have relented, put it back outside, and started watering it again. After the recent downpours it appears to be flourishing! The variety was, I believe, Uncle Bert's Purple Kale, but since this was originally a self-seeded survivor dug out of the border ("rescued") it is clearly extremely vigorous. Just what I like in my 'heritage' plants :-)

It rained heavily, and despite all my previous efforts at pouring water into them at least twice a day, the ripe tomatoes on a couple of my plants split. They do at least now have seeds in :-)
The Roma tomatoes don't seem to have split, despite being larger, but the first few are pretty much ready to pick now. Small by the standards of your average tinned tomato, but considerably larger than the one-and-a-half-inch towel-tomatoes!
Meanwhile the catch-up towel-tomato has set its first fruit, and the chilli has several, which will now have several months in which to ripen before the autumn ;-) The smaller chilli has its first flower-buds.

We have a couple of tiny plump mesembryanthemum seedlings.

Here is my best attempt at a literal rendition of the "Рыжий конь" lyric:
( Literal text )
Here is Boyarsky -- who as 'Soviet D'Artagnan' had of course learned to ride, and ride one-handed, for sword-wielding purposes! (Note also that Soviet Woman comes to the rescue of the struggling menfolk in matters of automotive mechanics :-p)

And this is my 'singing translation':

The motorway stretches as taut as a bow-string
And over the concrete the tyres thrum their song
I race down the road in my roaring steel motor
Where Great-Grandpa's chestnut went trotting along.

CHORUS:
I'm in a rush the whole day long
But all the same the whole day long
I fail to reach, the whole day long
A hundred vital places...
At night I dream about a horse
It comes to me, a chestnut horse
I feel its breath, that chestnut horse
With lilac eyes it gazes!

Great-Grandfather's scent was all minty and herbal
While I leave a reeking blue haze of exhaust -
I've nine dozen horsepower under my bonnet,
But Great-Grandpa managed with only one horse!

CHORUS:
I'm in a rush the whole day long [...]

But please don't conclude that I'm out of my senses -
That horse and that era have both gone for good.
Just take off your shoes, that is all I'm suggesting -
Go barefoot on grass as Great-Grandfather would!

CHORUS (x2):
I'm in a rush the whole day long
But all the same the whole day long
I fail to reach the whole day long
A hundred vital places...
At night I dream about a horse
It comes to me, a chestnut horse
I feel its breath, that chestnut horse
With lilac eyes it gazes!

( Notes )

I'm busy translating Mikhail Boyarsky's "Рыжий конь" (or to be more accurate, the Dobrynin/Derbenov song that happened to be a hit for Boyarsky in 1986) -- backwards, for no entirely good reason other than that I not only started with the chorus but then translated the last verse first :-) (And what *is* it about Russians and running barefoot over the grass? Is it some kind of atavistic folk-memory? At least I now recognise the phrase in question...!)

Naturally one does tend to translate rhyming couplets backwards, because there is no point in getting the perfect rendition of the first half only to then realise that there is no earthly way of getting anything to rhyme with that...( Read more... )

Four more lines to go. Now I remember why I didn't start with the first verse; this is the one where I don't actually know what any of the words mean and shall have to go away and research them first. (My motoring vocabulary is sorely lacking, even if I do know two different words for 'horse' and two for 'sword' respectively :-D)
( Parallel French text and grammar )
The woes of trying to do translation when all you have going for you is a really good command of English and just enough of another language to scratch out the meaning...

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Since I now have two long and narrow empty margarine tubs suitable to balance on my windowsill, I have tried planting up some of the kale and beetroot that went to seed, to see if it will grow (and eat as 'baby leaves' if it does). The kale is nice little round black seeds in dry white pods; the beetroot is pretty much invisible among the general black muck in the bottom of the paper bag, if there is any actual seed in there at all. However I did get unexpected germination from my previous attempts to plant from this collected seed-spike...

I also sowed some more mesembryanthemums ( Read more... )