Potterdammerung

(lj-cut text="Spoilerific Stuff Below The Cut!")

The last line of the last book: "Zuruck vom Ring!" clearly indicates that the planned schedule of Harry Potter movie releases - including some of the earlier ones, Das Ronngold¹, Die Walkure², and, of course, the penultimate Siegfried und Roy³ - should avoid coinciding with the release schedule for The Lord of the Rings films, but this advice was, apparently, ignored for the first two films in each series. Through the use of strategic delays, however, they managed to heed this advice for the later films. And, of course, that "competition" was just a trilogy.

Yeah, you gessed right, there aren't really any spoilers here. =)

I was somewhat correct last night: Justin now has a copy of Potterdammerung. He hasn't finished it yet. In fact, he means not to start it quite yet.

They were in bed by 9am last night. A local (to Laconia) bookshop put a copy aside for my mom so that it wouldn't disappear in the open-to-1am madness last night early this morning. They took a leisurely stroll over to the place earlier today and picked it up at a more sensible hour.

¹: In which Harry extends a sizable loan to the Weasley's youngest son. Co-stars Andy Serkis as Alberich, a dwarf that likes rings and mutters "my precious" quite a lot.

²: I'll make fun of the rest, but I'm not going near valkyrie maidens with a 10' halberd, unless I'm on a wing-ed steed of my own.

³: In which Hogwarts sends the kids off to a foreign exchange in Las Vegas. William Peterson appears as one of the local instructors, teaching a special Care of Magical Creatures class focusing on insect and insect-like animals, as well as providing an extension to the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum regarding the usage of forensic magic.

(/lj-cut(poor imitation thereof))

Six Down, Eight to go...

I planted a number of native plants today - six, to be exact - and almost got half-way done before deciding to call it a night. The hard part was figuring out where everything should go.

Most of the plants are not centerpieces or showstoppers - in fact, out of fourteen to be planted, ten are native ferns, and they are planted to help increase diversity. Growing in the wild, I've identified at least three species of fern on the property - Onoclea sensibilis (sensitive fern), Pteridium aquilinum (bracken), and - here's where the at-least comes in, as I haven't narrowed it down to a positive ID: Dennstaedtia punctilobula (hay scented fern) and/or Thelypteris noveboracensis (Parathelypteris noveboracensis) (New York fern) and/or Athyrium filix-femina (lady fern).

Today, I added an Osmunda regalis (royal fern) and an evergreen Polystichum acrostichoides (Christmas fern). On an aside, the site all the fern links point to belongs to the Connecticut Botanical Society, and is an exceptional resource for native ferns... specifically to Connecticut, but everything I've been interested in there is also native to Pennsylvania. The royal fern has a prominent location down on the island in Stone Stream, where a Christmas fern I planted last year and some native ferns are starting to thrive. It's between a winterberry that might reach 10' around and a newly planted shrub, but as it can reach 6' tall on its own, it should fit in nicely with that crowd, especially once the river birch, katsura, and paw paws provide a nice ceiling. The new Christmas fern is located alongside Stone Stream above the pair of larger hostas - there's some sensitive ferns and other natives around there, but it will take on a prominent role, especially during the months where the deciduous ferns fall apart.

The other four that went into the ground today were not ferns, all though one wants to be!

The Stylophorum diphyllum (celandine poppy or wood poppy) - a native wildflower - is positioned along Spruce Alley, where the meadow spills down off the sand mound. It should reseed itself nicely there, giving us some nice yellow spring flowers before most of the meadow wakes up for the year and gets going.

Across the stepping stones from the new Christmas fern, I planted a Physocarpus opulifolius (ninebark). It helps finish off the foundation planting, and, unlike most of the shrubs in the area around the porch, it provides a deciduous touch, and it does so with a beautiful peeling bark.

Down near the royal fern, I had tried to transplant some Comptonia peregrina (sweet fern) from the bank a year or so ago. I didn't grab enough root - it spreads by suckers, and what I planted was, essentially, three rootless sticks. As this set of three sticks has leaves and roots, I expect it to do much better. One of the key functions of sweet fern - which is a deciduous shrub - is to fix nitrogen in the soil. It will improve the soil, even as it looks pretty good (like a dark fern with woody branches) and smells beautiful.

The last one I'll list tonight was actually the first one planted, as it went in on the top edge of Bank Island, furthest from the house. It is an Ilex opaca 'Dan Fenton' (American holly 'Dan Fenton'), which is funny, because, as Louise at Edge of the Woods (who supplied all 14 of the plants) pointed out, it's a female plant. Dan Fenton may be honored by the name, but it really would have been more apt to name it Danielle... she should get along well with the male hollies, and make lots of nice berries to supply the birds with food.

I've got a couple of reviews of some new items I used today, and I'll try to write them up later, and then put them in the queue with all the book, movie, and music reviews I'm so far behind on. My goal was to post no more than one a day - but there hasn't been much worry about breaking that envelope. =)

I've also got some music reviews I'm trying to get to ASAP that will hopefully get done tonight - julianafinch's How to Take the Fall (which is currently playing, on The Wind that Shakes the Barley, a beautiful rendition of one of my favorite tunes!), tewok (and wife!)'s Na Bi Gòrach (as Port Righ; this was playing when I started writing this post! =), and today's arrival, Mythica's new disc Vicarious (which, no surprise, played prior to the two listed above... =). Excellent music - I've know some talented folks! =)

Recently Watched: Shark Tale

Shark Tale (Widescreen Edition)

Sure, it's candy. It's in-jokes for dozens of things, from inner cities to gangster movies. There is a good story at it's heart, though.

Sure, it's been done before. All good stories have. It's all in how you tell it, and this one is told with bright colors, CGI, and an anthropomorphized reef-to-NYC (hence the inner city and the mobsters).

It's fun, though - for both the kids and adults. Wrapped up in that fun stuff, at its core is the message that it's better to be who you are than who you think you want to be, and that's a lesson most people haven't quite picked up on. Even some relatively well-balanced folks (in that regard) might want a Lamborghini and a billion dollar mansion, and, sometimes, we'd even twist ourselves into something else to show we're worthy of such a thing. Those kind of success stories tend to be short lived - even if the bio comes out during the time of acclaim, chances are future editions will uncover all the tragedy of the downfall. That success is achieved at the end - as a result of hard work and of staying true to oneself - is of a smaller degree than what had been dreamed up at the outset, but it is a stronger, deeply satisfying, longer lasting success.

The most enjoyable characters for me were the sharks - the Mafia - particularly De Niro's Don and Peter Falk's lemon shark. The jellyfish Rastafarians (Ziggy Marley and Doug E. Doug) were pretty cool, too. =)

Review Updatia Maintainia: I'll be getting to those three aforementioned music reviews Monday through Wednesday night in the order I received the discs - more readers on the weekdays, for the most part! =)

Happy Birthday to sikander7!

Many happy returns of the day!