#me: i love wild violets they're such a joy to see | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rederiswrites · 3 days

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Worked in the front garden this evening. Reginald came and visited me. Got a total of eighteen plants in the ground in the front, and did some potting up of succulents in the back.

Everything in this corner is just lovely. My columbine is even more beautiful this year than last, and the yarrow and bee balm have spread and grown so much in this, their second year. I'm so excited to see them bloom. I think the natural purple bee balm is further down and we have the red in this photo.

My calendula is entirely self seeded now, but this one plant must have found a sheltered spot, because it's far outstripped the rest and bloomed such a vivid orange that it kinda screws with my camera. That, and one escape dandelion.

In the back left are the many seedlings of funky-colored echinacea. The plants were pretty puny last year, but this year they're coming up thick! There was a red variety and... Something else? And an absolutely wild one called "green twister" that had pink and green flowers. I grew that one from seed last year, and an very eager to see if it's still there, because it didn't bloom last year. I do wish my actual echinacea purpurea had spread so much, but I only see a couple new plants in that area.

This was a surprise find when I was weeding. There are two next to each other and none anywhere else, so it's a sure thing that I planted them. I *think* it's St John's Wort. Don't actually remember planting that so uh... Sweet.

I won't make you stare at a few leaves trying to figure out what I'm trying to show you, but I will say that within the last week I've seen new growth of a bunch of unusual natives I'd pretty much written off as lost money. I ordered them in late fall last year, and then because of The Sick never getting better until this year, I only got any of them in the ground by--i genuinely think it was December. They died back to the ground by mid-January, and I'd put them down as (quite a bit of) wasted money. But now I find myself pretty unmistakeably in possession of four Cardinal flower plants, six Rattlesnake Masters (best plant name ever?), two wood betonies, and at least four things that are definitely deliberate but which I cannot yet identify. Penstemon? I don't know, but I'm thrilled. I thought it was all lost, but in fact it's almost all growing! Unearned blessings for sure.

I lied, I will make you stare at leaves.

Seedling bonanza! Poppy, calendula, wild violet, and in the bottom right a massive concentration of something that's far too small to id but given the placement might be a return of the toothache plant. I am intimidated by the future task of thinning. But what bounty!

More seedling mania. Here, calendula, marigold, and a few chamomile. I'd expect there to be a LOT of reseeded coreopsis here too, but if so I can't id it yet.

My succulent garden continues to be one of my great joys. And just look at all that new growth on my prickly pear! It would be amazing to get flowers and fruits this year. Just think, this was two pads in a pot last spring! By next year I'll have to start harvesting just to keep it back.

Tree pretty.

#gardening

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fahye · 1 year

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(1/?) Freya!!!!! I apologise in advance, this ask is going to be all over the place. Since I discovered your ao3 profile many, many years ago, you've been one of those auto-read authors for me, the kind you follow blindly and faithfully into fandoms you've never heard of, and crucially, the kind who always, always deliver. I must have read your capri ficS fifty times EACH, i revisit them like every six months, they're so good (ALSO!! Those fic are the reason I discovered the capri trilogy, SO THANK YOU FOR THAT!!!) ANYWAY!! That is to say, when you announced that you were publishing your first original novel, I was SO excited. And AML did not disappoint, it had everything that made me fall in love with your writing in the first place, fascinating world building, and characters i want to kiss on the forehead and tuck into my pockets (AND MAGICAL HOUSES!!!! Bestest of tropes). I read it around the time it came out and I couldn't wait for the sequel. And then I learned what the sequel was actually going to be about and ART immediately became my most anticipated book of the year. Every tidbit you divulged made me go to goodreads and stare at the publication date for full minutes like sheer longing was going to magically make it sooner.

(2/3 now I think) Magical murder mystery! Sapphics!!! ON BOATS!!! It sounded like it was going to be the book of dreams. AND IT WAS!!!!!! It was sooooo gooood. I loved everything about it: the plot (delightful, delightful, and delightful. A VALISE FULL OF PORNOGRAPHY!!! WILD ANIMALS RUNNING AMOK!! A FAKE REAL SEANCE!!! God, just thinking about it makes me so happy), the characters (i loved everyone so dearly!!! Even the background characters were painted so vividly and charmingly, and of course the orgy quartet HAS MY WHOLE HEART!!! Both individually and together. Special mentions go to Lord Hawthorn, the aristocratic asshole of my heart, AND MAUDIE!!!! She was so complex and wonderul, and I just saw you one post where you described her as a lesbian miles vorkosigan, which????!?!?!?! I'D NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT LIKE THAT BUT YES ABSOLUTELY, my most beloved brilliant disaster generals… AND OH, SHE'S EVEN ON A BOAT, SO "ADMIRAL" IS FITTING), and of course the prose… genuinely so astonishingly, consistently beautiful. I can't think of any other books where sentences regularly make me stop to marvel at how gorgeously crafted and evocative they are, at the cleverness of the pictures they paint, without taking me out of the story. And the consistent music imagery throughout the book, a connecting thread in both povs!!! I hope we get to see the girls at Spinet House in book three. And the sex scenes of course… you are a master!!!! So sexy and lush, and such excellent character studies at the same time, I am in awe. Also, so happy to see excellent, explicit wlw smut!!!! Not enough of it out there!!! Which of course brings me to the relationships…. AHHHHH SO GOOD. SO GOOD!! The joy and discovery and tension and building trust of Maud and Violet, the excellent dynamics of the quartet, but also Maud and Hawthorn, UNEXPECTEDLY MAYBE MY FAVORITE DUO, and omg, the way you depict even "off page" relationships, ie maud and edwin, maud and robin, robin and edwin… so much feeling and tenderness and care!!!! You don't need to be told that they love each other, it comes across so, so clearly. ALSO (last one I promise) FORSYTHIA CLUB BACKSTORY!!! Flora and Beth crushed my heart underfoot)

(3/3) ANYWAY ALL OF THIS TO SAY…. ART was so much FUN!!!!! A treat from beginning to end, one of my fave reads this year. AND A POWER UNBOUND IS ALREADY MY MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF NEXT YEAR, which… is going to be thought, given that it's a whole 12 months away, womp womp. I can't wait to get more of lord hawthorn (who i hoped would be a future book protag on very first appearance in aml!!!), i want to pry him open like a clam and peer into his brain, and of alan ross, and of their DELICIOUS dynamic… also looking forward to learning more about elsie alston and to see the whole gang interact, magical houses included!!! Anyway, that is all, I apologise for the insane amount of capslock and exclamation points, I just wanted to make sure my appreciation got across, I LOVE THE LAST BINDING THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS WONDERFUL SERIES, I WISH YOU MUCH JOY IN WRITING AND I CAN'T WAIT RO SEE WHAT YOU DO NEXT!!

anon I am so sorry I had to Read More your message because in the depths of my soul I want to frame it, decoupage it, enclose it in enamel with little flecks of gold leaf, shove it in the face of everyone who visits my house, etc.

this is like when you open a ‘someone left a comment’ email from ao3 and your face does a weird :DDDDDDDD thing with each subsequent scroll-down you have to do to read the whole thing. thank you?? you’re so lovely and this message filled me with joy.

and I can say with full confidence that the theme of music continues in book 3, and that I have shoved my knife RIGHT into the clam-shell hinges of lord hawthorn for you all.

thank you again! I hope 2023 brings you many enjoyable things, and that my book is one of them.

#ask replies #a restless truth

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yumeka36 · 1 year

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Thoughts on Pokemon Scarlet/Violet

Now that I've completed the main storyline of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, I wanted to give my detailed thoughts on the games.

Much of the buzz about these games is unfortunately negative - that they're fraught with bugs, suffer from frame rate and performance issues, and have clear signs that they were rushed. While I can't say that this isn't true, the question I can definitely answer is whether these things hindered my personal enjoyment of the games...and the answer is no. I recall that there was even more initial negativity for Sword/Shield due to them being the first games cutting out pokemon from the national-dex, plus similar complaints about graphics and performance issues. People even went so far as to say they won't even buy the games. But of course, those games ended up being massively successful. And, as I expected, Scarlet/Violet have also sold incredibly well. As much as fans trash the new Pokemon games, they seem to always be a hit. I guess, when it comes down to it, we just love Pokemon too much to stay mad at it for very long, lol. Does it suck that these games continue to exclude pokemon and are riddled with bugs/glitches? Of course. But does it also mean that the bad things about the games outweigh the joy that they bring? Definitely not, at least for me. A game with glitches can still be a very fun game (just look at Pokemon Red/Blue) and I'm having a blast with Scarlet/Violet, just as I did with Sword/Shield, and really, every main series Pokemon game since the beginning...there was never a generation of Pokemon I disliked. Like I always say, even if there are some things about a beloved franchise that you don't like, if you find that you can't fully divorce yourself from it, you might as well make the best of it and have fun.

So with that out of the way, let's look at the new games themselves. One of the main selling points for Scarlet/Violet is being the first "open world" Pokemon games. While that term is used a bit loosely, it does mean you're able to do any of the 18 story events in any order you like. Now I have to say that I played through the game in a way that most people probably did not - I looked up all the 18 events on Serebii, noted the levels of the pokemon for each, then did them in order starting with the lowest levels to highest levels. For example, I did the bug gym first (LV14), then the first titan pokemon (LV16), then the grass gym (LV17), then the first Team Star base (LV21), and so on. Of course I stopped in between to explore, battle trainers, and catch pokemon, but for the most part I just stuck to the story. I don't like being too under or over leveled, so with this method the game was fairly challenging, especially towards the end where the level gaps for the story events seem to get bigger. But from what I've heard, people who play the game normally have tended to get very over leveled for much of the main story. Assuming future pokemon games will also be open world, hopefully they'll implement some kind of level scaling. It might be tricky with a game like pokemon, for example, if you put level scaling, you can't make a legendary pokemon LV10 or something, but that would then mean restricting the location of that pokemon until later, hence making it less open world. I'm sure there's some way to make it more balanced.

But as far as the open world aspect of Scarlet/Violet overall? I thought this was the closest a Pokemon game has ever gotten to making me feel like I'm really on an adventure with pokemon. Being able to traverse through vast fields, mountains, rivers, etc, seeing tons of pokemon out in the overworld wandering around, sleeping, running, swimming, flying, and hanging out in groups of similar species, being able to seamlessly go from town to town without any loading screens, and have battles with trainers you meet along the way while the wild pokemon in the area continue to go about their business all around you (instead of the standard battle background templates we've gotten in every other game). Setting up a picnic at any spot and being able to freely roam around with your team of pokemon (without the locked camera in Sword/Shield) and being able to play ball with them, bathe them, watch the cute ways that they sleep, etc...all of this added up to probably the most immersive Pokemon adventure I've ever had, so I definitely have to give Scarlet/Violet kudos for that. Another improvement is in the textures of the pokemon sprites themselves. You can now see things like fur, feathers, metallic shines, etc., instead of the "flat" textures that all pokemon shared in past games. I guess one nitpick I have is that the towns themselves are pretty dull. They all have very similar food, clothing, and supply stores and no unique buildings/houses to enter and NPCs to talk to like in past games. I can kind of see why they went this route for games like this, but having each town have at least one unique thing besides the gym leader would have been nice.

Terastallizing is the new gimmick in these games, and although I haven't yet gotten around to fully exploring how to use it in competitive battling, I think it has great potential! I'm glad they kept raids in these games as it was a great multiplayer addition in Sword/Shield, though I'm still a bit confused with how turn order works in tera raids. I'll figure it out eventually.

Another thing I love about the games is how it's even easier to make competitive pokemon. As someone whose main interest in Pokemon games is battling people online, this is very welcome. They already made it easy in Sword/Shield with the addition of mints and exp candy, but Scarlet/Violet goes a step further by making all the supplies you'll need for a competitive pokemon - vitamins, mints, held items, and bottle caps - available to buy at stores! (Also you can now hyper train pokemon at LV50, which is great). No more having to farm battle points or search desperately for that Munchlax with Leftovers. Though the one downside here is that all these things cost lots of money. In Sword/Shield, I was able to easily farm money by rematching the champion cup using my LV100 gigantamax Meowth with G-Max Goldrush. But apparently in Scarlet/Violet the only battles you can redo are in the Academy Ace Tournament, which I haven't explored yet and I'm not even sure if you get money for that. Seems like your main source of post-game income in Scarlet/Violet will be from selling the respawning items in the overworld and drops from tera raids. Still researching this but hopefully people will discover better methods as time goes on.

Another thing I really liked about Scarlet/Violet is the main storyline and characters. Now I'm someone who pretty much never replays Pokemon games - after I complete the game once, I spend the rest of my time in the post-game world. As such, most of the stories and characters in past games haven't really stuck in my head very well. Overall, I just don't find the human characters in Pokemon games all that interesting or memorable (with a few exceptions, like Cyrus and Lusamine). However, having finished Scarlet/Violet, I have to say that the overarching plot between the three main storylines, and how the characters you befriend there come together in a surprisingly suspenseful and emotional climax, was fantastic. I actually found myself liking a lot of the characters - I liked the relationship between the Team Star members and Penny, I liked Nemona as a slightly eccentric but overall well-meaning rival, and I even found some of the gym leaders interesting as well. The games also have a few pre-rendered cutscenes (a rarity in Pokemon games) which were great at giving us a better variety of expressions and gestures from the characters, which helped further the emotional impact of the story. And speaking of expressions, I absolutely adored the animations for Koraidon/Miraidon in the cutscenes - very reminiscent of Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon. Kudos to whoever decided to give the mascot pokemon such endearing expressions.

To conclude, I think Pokemon Scarlet/Violet are fantastic additions to the Pokemon series despite some benign glitches. Improvements such as the open world immersion, a more fleshed out storyline and characters, and easier ways of getting items are all welcome in my book. While it would have been nice if they delayed the game longer to smooth out all the graphical bugs, I still think the final product we got is very enjoyable for any Pokemon fan. I can't wait to keep delving into the post-game, and look forward to future DLC!

#pokemon #pokemon scarlet #pokemon violet #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon scarlet violet #pokemon sv #nintendo switch

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