Robin McKinley's Blog, page 168

Roses

Okay.  More roses.

Mme Isaac Periere.  One of my can't-live-without roses.  Although a beautiful bush she is not.   You want some serious disguise action for the bush part.  Inadvertently what I've got is eight square feet of Fantin Latour lying all over the landscape.  Mme Isaac pokes her head up through just fine, although one of these years I'm going to plant a clematis to climb through her (and perforce Fantin too).  I rave about Mme Isaac's perfume every year.  So, here we go:  rave rave ...

Cascades of notes and . . .

 

I actually got to bed early last night because I was so frightened of handbells at the cathedral.  Even on enough sleep I'm pretty much a zombie at morning service ring* but the handbell gig was at 1:45, which meant plenty of time to wake up, caffeinate, and have a nervous breakdown.    And then there was a convocation of incompetent drivers at the mews so I couldn't get out because everyone was flapping and fluttering and refusing to back up because they're cack-handed twits and they don't ...

Opera and handbells

 

 It's the Queen's birthday and everybody is going nuts over the World Cup*.  I went to the opera.

It has been an unnecessarily exciting day.  Well, it started last night.**  I was looking forward to a nice weekend's gardening, because it's not supposed to rain and it's not too hot, and I glanced in my diary because I just wanted to check that there weren't any weddings this weekend that I had to ring bells for.  There aren't any wedding rings*** but my first Grange Park opera of the season...

Subarticulate

 

Zo, grahf umgub FRABDABNABBLE arnyagixxit.  Glag.  Juvverund racondil brirt.  WANGLETHORP.  Deprath. 

             It's been a long day.  Raglsolsby.  Dopperilplunk.  Etc.  Fridays are always extra-long because I'm trying to stuff two extra-curriculars into one day, which is both insane and forbidden.  I do it every week.  I am insane and forbidden.  I like the concept of being forbidden:  I embody forbiddenness.  Hmmm.  I could probably write a story about embodying forbiddenness*. . . .

    ...

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 b...

ROSES, con't ll

Photo of intense wall.  This is mainly Mme Greg, but you can see Mme Alfred peeking out here and there.  What amuses me is the drainpipe.  I don't know what everybody else's gardening catalogues are trying to sell them–and as you have seen in previous posts I am not unduly resistant to the idea of nailing more plant opportunities to my house walls–but something that has got very fashionable here lately is Drainpipe Planters to Hide Those Ugly Drainpipes.  I'd be happy to put up a drainpipe...

Cara's legacy, guest blog by southdowner

… I fell in love with bull terriers in an instant, boom, just like that. A coup de foudre as the French, who wrote the language of romance, would say. Even now, that instant has a crystal clarity that never dims with time. I was sitting on the top deck of a Manchester bus, high above the city on one of its steepest hills. Walking stoically up the hill, master alongside, nautical roll very pronounced and piratical patch clearly visible was this character. Too large a presence to be just "a...

Varieties of vocal expression

 

The day plunged into an exciting start when hellhounds got off lead for a superhurtle the first time in probably a fortnight, mainly because it's been too hot and they haven't been interested.  Yesterday the temperature dropped and you could see them sort of cautiously opening their eyes and looking around* and today we went on one of the walks where there are a couple of big fields that are sometimes sufficiently unoccupied that I can let them run havoc.  There's a nice bit of life jigsaw t...

Ask Robin

 

So I'm hearing from people who have read the ARC of PEGASUS and really liked it.  Which is great.  Tell all your friends and relatives*.  Leave it lying** around suggestively and when harmless, innocent people pick it up saying, ooh, what a pretty cover, tell them how much you liked it.  And that pub date is 2 November.

            What is not so great is that I'm starting to get the hysterical and panic-stricken emails from people saying, you HAVE to do a sequel!  I know you never do...

June Gardening

 

I got back to the cottage last night to a scary message on my phone machine.  You may remember, if I poke you with a sharp stick, that about three months ago there was an ad in The Ringing World* for a set of handbells for sale, which was duly brought to my attention by Niall**.  I havered for a while before I phoned up about them and fortunately I had shillyshallied long enough and someone else had already bought them.  Probably.  The person buying them wanted to save driving to the other s...