Blameless pastimes

[flemmings]

So livejournal goes down, ohh woe what is there to do? Well, I spent ninety minutes yesterday morning working through three pages of Soseki's Sorekara and writing down all his obscure (to me) kanji for future reference. Parenthetically, I can't remember why I bought Sorekara. I think because of all his novels that's the one that impressed me in translation as having the least there there and I wanted to see how it looked in the original. The main character turns out to be as much a dweeb in Japanese as I remember him from good god was it really twenty years ago? only more so, obscure kanji or no obscure kanji. I bought the book a good eight or ten years ago, and I fancy it'll be another eight or ten before I finish it. Sometimes I feel like I operate in sidereal time.

But remembering what most of the kanji were that I wrote down yesterday morning, I did something I've been intending to do for a while: pulled out my H&S kanji dictionary, opened it to the 'grasses' radical section, and spent another ninety minutes happily writing down grass radical kanji and googling the names for pictures. Botany was never my strong point so, you know, telling me something is vetch or a mallow or an oleaster is less than useless. But seeing pictures (of these truly undistinguished roadside shrubs) does help.

However, I must say this: English or Japanese, the field flowers and plants that get mentioned in literature are indeed scrubby little weeds to my city child's eye. No inherent beauty: nothing to get worked up about. I can just- just- see how they look different to someone who lives among them and has a reason to pay attention to them. I was astounded, many years ago, visiting an English friend and her three year old son, and going for a walk and accidentally touching a stinging nettle. My friend told the little boy to go find a dockweed for my hand: and he did, within minutes. Amazing. But still: dockweeds are nothing to *look* at.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I'm a city child and I've always paid a vast amount of attention to weeds and wildflowers - I always thought, more so because I'm a city child, because there's less to look at on a daily basis. But I'm the only one I know who's like this, so I suppose not. XD

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I felt a moment of panic when LJ went down; how was I going to know what happened to my friends? How was I going to contact them again? Yikes!

I am now in the process of developing a backup plan.

So many plants are weedy looking until they've been cultivated to be more appealing. I'd always been interested in plant & herb lore but until my stepmother came into the picture with her field guides and first hand knowledge I had never really known what I was looking at.

Heh, I still remember the first time she served us salad with nasturtium petals. I was amazed you could eat flowers of all things!

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I should also add that I pretty much lived outdoors until my early twenties. ^_^

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

I remember dockweed and nettles too. From spending time in England. I was completely awed by the huge open spaces and all that green and plants.

Living somewhere like I do there isn't much to be appreciative off. We have nice trees though. I'm more of a tree person, but I have a soft spot for camellias. For a whole host of reasons.

Recently however, Darian who normally runs everywhere..if he sees flowers, and we only get the weedy kind here, he will stop and look at them and stop to smell them. He tells me that they smell nice and that they're really beautiful! It really is nice to look at these things through a child's eyes.

I mean I don't really know if he can actually smell them or not, but perhaps he has seen people on tv stop and smell flowers and is only merely copying them. Still he looks so happy doing it how could I not see what he sees even if it is make believe!

^__^...I was like that with the 'bird' section of H&S.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I have many books on weeds. In 4-H, I got to the state fair with my weeds projects! Weeds are wonderous. Also mushrooms. And dirt.

I do not understand you at all.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I mean, if you start out with countryside and people saying Oh that's a butterbur and this here is coltsfoot, I'm sure weeds look quite different from the get-go. But urban gardeners want *flowers* and those come in distinctly middle-class forms: rose bushes, dahlias, geraniums, petunias nado nado. Flowering weeds are hard put to vie with those. Also people want grass. Weeds are what choke grass. So much for buttercups and dandelions and Queen Anne's lace. The city mindset towards these thinbgs is largely one of unfamiliarity and suspicion.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

The definition of a weed is an unwanted plant. Ergo, if you want the plant, it is not a weed. Which is why "wild flower" and "weed" are very often the same plants, depending on which source you're consulting. ^^ (Though I'm sure there'd be no disagreement that kudzu = weed.)

But I don't think of it as urban or non, really. I just find wild plants pretty interesting, and domesticated plants that can't survive w/o time and effort much, much less so.

[doire]

I'm sure it's the names. Names have power; it's so much harder to dismiss anything once you know it has a name, even if you can't quite recall it.

But I've generally preferred the small and intricate over big and brash, so weeds and wild forms do it for me. And trees...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I think my problem was that having first met the plants through their names, all so redolent and suggestive (loosestrife, comfrey, madderwort) I was taken aback at actually seeing, well, *weeds.* Spindly and messy and possessing tiny blossoms which, as I say, my suburban soul couldn't even think of as flowers.

*tugs on your sleeve*

[luxetumbra.livejournal.com]

Oh, You who have forgotten more about Chinese history than I shall ever know!

Who might this this be (http://pics.livejournal.com/radiofreebanri/pic/000xz0d7/g60)?

*runs under the bed and waits for Dragon Fic (because, damn (http://radiofreebanri.livejournal.com/18351.html?page=2&style=mine#comments))* :D

Re: *tugs on your sleeve*

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(Now she ded from dragon, yes)

You're asking the wrong person, truly: but that kind of hat looks emperory to me. First emperor, going by this (http://www.itmonline.org/arts/dynasties.htm). (scroll down) Which rather raises the question, who is that? Cause it looks too young to be Tentei, and does look rather like Mr Tan Badnasty, without the hangy hairpiece.

Re: *tugs on your sleeve*

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Inverted it in photoshop. It appears to be Konzen with his hair up, of a piece with Zhuge Liang Tenpou and unidentified Three Kingdoms warrior Kenren in the last volume.

Re: *tugs on your sleeve*

[luxetumbra.livejournal.com]

See! My dusty brain remembered that and I knew you'd know! Thank you for the link!

Also, nipples. Hee.