Watching Our Flowers Grow

[porphyry]

I love to garden. I now mostly grow flowers although I used to plant large vegetable gardens too. (I would like to go back to doing that, but that would be a huge project because there's so much wildlife around here I would have to devise some clever way to keep the deer, rabbits, raccoons, possums, squirrels, foxes, etc. etc. out of it.) Anyway, here are some photos of some of our lovely blooms this year. Later in the season when all the flowering plants have grown, I will post more pictures in their maturity.




http://picasaweb.google.com/Anebo10/Flowers

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

That's all right--he looks very young. I've never heard of that film--what's it about?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Losey did a version of Don Giovanni which cannot be recommended too highly--it is the film that converted me to opera.

In that version it is palyed as tragedy--converted from comedey just like Barry Lyndon.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Bulfinch's Mythology either, and probably never will.

The best place to start, knowing your tastes, would be The Dedalus Book of Greek Decadence, but, since I did not develope the idea of pitching such a book to Dedalus until after they were put out of business by the British Governmnet, I will instead make a few recommendations.

The most obvious one is the Odyssey. I think you would like it far better than the Iliad, as it is filled with the fantastic. Odysseus' virtue is to outwit his foes by understanding human psychology, comapred to Achilles who is faster than anyone else in running down and killing the fleeing enemy. Translation makes all the differnce, naturally. I would recommend Fitzgerald, although if you have Lattimore's or Fagles new version to hand, they should be satisfactory. The one provided in the Loeb volume is quite dreadful, as are many others.

Tragendy is also not a bad place to start. Perhaps the one most congenal to you would be the Bacchae, I won't describe it except to say its like a decadent apoclaypse. There aren't any really good translations of Tragedy, but the series edited by Geene and Lattimore is not bad and still readily avaiable. Some years ago the BBC made a series of three films of Sophocles' Theban plays which wee outstanding. They were based on stage productions then running in London but they were made as films with proper camerawork and editing. They were broadcast on PBS and I always thought they would make an excellent introduction to Greek literature; unbeleivably, howeevr, they have never been released on DVD, or even VHS as far as I can tell.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

"Geene"? "wee"? "howeevr"?

Are you really wanting to be Anthony Burgess, inventing some language you haven't told me about? :)