I'm looking over...

[pyat]

My lawn has been replaced with clover. Perhaps I'm a bad homeowner, but I prefer it to grass.


Father's Day breakfast this morning, at Cora's Restaurant in Ancaster.

We went to the bigboxbookstore after, and took turns shopping and watching the girls. While searching for a replacement copy of Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying (mine was eaten by a dog), a mother and her teenage daughter and a store employee wandered into the O's. The daughter, who was about 14 and looked very spunky, was looking for George Orwell books. The employee handed her Animal Farm.

"I've read that one already," she said. He found Nineteen Eighty-Four. "That's the only other one we have," he said. I noted that there was a copy of Burmese Days on the next shelf, and moved on. The store employee then spotted a collection of all Orwell's novels, and the girl said she wanted that, or Ninteen Eighty-Four.

"Nooooo, I don't think you'd like it," said the mother.
"I liked Animal Farm," said the girl.
"No, I mean you'd find the ideas too complicated," her mother replied.
"I've tackled some pretty complicated books," said the girl.
"No, I don't mean hard words. I mean the political ideas are too complicated. It's from another era, really," said the mother.

I did really want to say something like, "Hey, I read Nineteen Eighty-Four when I was eleven, and understood enough of it to make it worthwhile. And who are you to disapprove of someone trying to read something complicated, or outdated?"

But I didn't, and instead went to look for some G.K. Chesterton books they didn't have in stock.

Comments

[catsarah.livejournal.com]

No no!! Clover is good! All legumes are nitrogen binders! It will make your little patch of dirt there that much more productive when Erin digs it up to put in more flowers :) Clover is good!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Legumes? Are there clover beans under there?

I like clover. :) No plans to get rid of it, though the guy next door keeps making noises about splitting the cost of new sod.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Clover is much lower-maintenance than grass, and it blooms at a height you can leave alone without the city coming and mowing it for you. I'm a fan. Don can talk about sod all he wants.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

So long as he isn't the type to sod it for you in the night. (Don't laugh. I tend to have neighbours who "weed" my plants, and a renowned native plant expert hereabouts had her whole yard uprooted and replaced with sod because folks complained that it wasn't grass.)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

The guy next to my parent's house spread chemical fertilizer all over their lawn as a favour, the day after my dad did. The result was a totally dead lawn and no offer of recompense.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

I think the appropriate (if potentially dangerous) response to people like this is to spray paint their house in rainbow colours. "I think it looks SO much better!"

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

Actually, you're a good homeowner, clover takes less water, stays greener, rarely needs cutting, and actually enriches your soil instead of depleting it! Also, the flowers are adorable.

Mmm, Corabrunch! Cats and I will be heading out for brunch shortly, although by this time of day, it's more of a lunch :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yes! I've noticed my lawn doesn't turn brown in August.

Mmm. Cora Lunch. Do they have a different lunch menu?

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

No idea! We're not going to Cora's ^_^

[anidada.livejournal.com]

1) How are you a bad homeowner for replacing something environmentally irresponsible with something infinitely better? *confused*

2) Yay, Cora's!

3) I think it depends on the kid. I admire the way the mom handled that, actually, given the content (not just the political ideas). She'll find her way to it one way or the other -- probably via the library, as she's clearly a reader.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

1) The guy next door grumbles about it. I think it smells nice and needs less mowing. On that farflung day when we finally get a new house with a lawn we're not sharing, I'd definitely want clover. I love the smell of it, after rain.

2) I went from not know it existed, to wanting to have every breakfast there, in a space of three weeks.

3) I suppose I might think differently if it were a different book, or an author I didn't like so much. And obviously the mom would know her better than a random stranger. Though, a 14 year old who cared enough about a specific author she'd already read probably doesn't need that much in the way of parental guidance.

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

Pfft, you don't share a lawn with the guy anymore than I share a lawn with my neighbours. You've even got a garden splitting your lawn from his. What would do it for him, a fence?

You can buy clover seed, too *grins* I wonder what D would think if Erin and I spent a few days out there rooting up the grass and sowing clover!

Cats has a patch that we're going to dig up for more garden: It's mostly clove and white violets, we could provide you with sod of your own ;)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big fan of parents telling kids they can't handle the big ideas of a book. If they can't handle it, it will go over their heads and censorship is unnecessary; but if they can handle it, they've enriched their minds to handle that much more later, and to be able to talk intelligently with other well-read people.

I high school kid going out of her way to find a non-chick-lit book that most kids her age are groaning about having to read at school is something to be celebrated, not quashed.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the parent is more likely to have an idea of what their kid can handle. As I said, if she really wants to read it, she'll get hold of it eventually. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

And telling her it's too hard for her is a good way to make sure that she will!

"No, dear, this candy is far too chocolately for you..."

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Astonishing how well that works.

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

I read Hamlet when I was 11 and I don't remember anyone ever telling me I couldn't read something as a child.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

And I bet if someone had said, "You can't read that. It's too grown up," you'd have been doubly sure of reading it.

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

Who me? *winks*

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

With all that clover, you know, you really should entertain giving a home to two or three bunnies, to help appreciate it even more. ^_^

The breakfast photos keep wanting to seem like a stereo image to me. (Surprisingly easy to do, actually - the actual distance involved seems quite unimportant)

It's from another era, really

One in which ubiquitous surveillance was in the future?

I think I might have tried suggesting Persepolis, too - quite different, but I get the feeling it might have been well received also.

[mrs-dm.livejournal.com]

It never pays to correct other parents on these kinds of issues. I remember a few years ago, when I was standing in the grocery store line up. John Glenn had just done his geriatric space flight thing and was plastered all over the magazines. A young girl asked her mother, "Who's that man?" and her mom answered, "That's John Glenn, the first man in space."

Well, I just couldn't let that go, and said, "Actually, the first man in space was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin."

The mom gave me a dirty look and moved on.

[katepufftail.livejournal.com]

Clover? Clover?! Away with it! Break out the broad-leaf herbicides and then till under the withered brown remains so that there's no trace left of the perfidious weed!

Only then can you lay turf, or re-seed. Creeping Bentgrass, or perhaps some blue grass. That's the ticket! Everyone knows a lawn is something that needs to be fought with and cursed, a chore rather than something to enjoy.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Stink-thistle-grass and corpse flowers, all the way!

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

I hope that girl was smart enough to find lib.orwell.ru, which I've found highly enjoyable and valuable.
_Keep the Aspidistra Flying_ is an uncomfortably good book -- uncomfortable because I see, in the protagonist, more of myself and my friends than I would like. Some extremely smart people, but they mostly seem to have been born significantly too early, at a time when we're dealing with lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy than are appropriate to their talents. I'm attempting to develop practical skills, but probably with too little discipline and a day late.
Have you read _Coming Up For Air_? It's great, for my money. It has Orwell's typically pitiless and unsparing perspective, combined with... something else good, which I'm too jetlagged to coherently describe.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I have indeed read Coming up for Air! The edition I have has a joyous cover photo of a man leaping over a puddle in a city street, and review blurbs referring to it as "charming" and a "cheerful masterpiece."

I quite like it, but it's definitely not all that cheerful. :)

I have a theory that Terry Prachett's inspiration for Fred Colon and Nobby Nobs were actually George Bowling (Bowel-ing) and Corporal Nobby from Coming up for Air.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Yes, "cheerful" and "charming" are definitely not the terms that I was searching (perhaps fishing?) for. Apparently the copywriter never read the book -- even two pages in, you'd never think of using those adjectives. Your theory does seem to have more to it than the Law of Fives. It's a bit of a stretch to see Colon in Bowling, but Nobbs is a dead ringer for Nobby - both of them larcenous, disreputable, dirty, with a faint smell of Other about them.

[paka.livejournal.com]

read Nineteen Eighty-Four when I was eleven, and understood enough of it to make it worthwhile

So I'm curious (well, about that and a dumb question about The Wind in the Willows, but I'll ask that as a message later); we were all required to read Nineteen Eighty-Four as basically a "and Communism is bad and evil and see how terrible that is, and don't you want to join the Army like a good Georgia kid so that you can do your bit against the evil Commies?" But obviously you grew up in a place which was really a lot nicer than where I was. I was wondering what the context was like for you, for reading the book?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well... uh.... *awkward shuffle* In my case, I'd seen a bit of the movie and thought the uniforms and telescreens and stuff were really cool. I thought of it as science fiction. I think I was in high school before I started to process it as anything more than that.