h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's a rose I've been meaning to stop and smell. Wait, our roses are mostly gone by. Maybe I can smell a fragrant lily.

The purple coneflowers are just starting to open. They smell like ripe peaches, and there's not a finer experience than getting lost in their aroma .

(Great issue of the Post, by the way. Tavaron's photo of that delicious-looking peony, and now your sublime reflections on letting your mind wander.... )

Thanks, Paul. Yes, the lilies are nice this week.

I should probably plant some clover next year. I like it, especially the purple stuff, and this would be a peace gesture to the animals who eat it, as well as a help to local pollinators.

Good idea!

We love our wildflowers every spring, and so do the bees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO2OQMTa6YM

Is the plant Jacob's Ladder?

If I could get a grip on what to grow, I wouldn't worry so much about the rabbits. My neighbors like the bunnies a lot. One even has a pet one. Year by year I go through the list of plants that rabbits won't eat. So far I have peonies, False Indigo, Azaleas/rhododendrons, and some Spring ephemerals. I'm learning that the taller Rudbeckia survives better than the short Rudbeckia because rabbits lose interest when they have to reach too high. Cost enters into the equation. I'm spending Tenants Association money, and I worry about being blamed for wasting it.

Everything hates marigolds. Plant a lot of them around the other flowers. This works.

That blue plant is mint, say the plant people in the family. Mrs Hoggett says if it has square stems, it's mint.

I have a planter with marigolds and a white coneflower. The animals neatly avoided the marigolds but ate the top of the coneflower. They selectively find the occasional coneflowers wherever they are, and nibble them. Except when I spray the flowers with Liquid Fence. It's a drastic measure, as the spray smells like rotten eggs.

Hostas are supposed to be very tasty to rabbits, but they never get nibbled. Black-eyed Susans and squash leaves are supposed to repel rabbits, but the rabbits we have here eat them just the same.

My Hubbard squash plant has started to travel. There's no telling how long the vine will get. My beets are big enough that I can use a few of the leaves to cook with. My beans are blooming heavily, so in about five days I will have a meal of beans.

Summer is a nice season.

What translations can do to destroy meaning or give unwanted side effects.

"Everything hates marigolds"

The Dutch name of the Marigold flower is Afrikaantje, which translates back as "African" (deminutive)

Need I explain more?

No insult intended, I assure you.

Good point about translations. I used to teach translation. I always told the students, 'Go back to the thought, and say that same thought in the other language.'

I already gathered that. No insult intended for my part as well, but I just couldn't let it lie there.

Of course not! Also, I learned something.

That reminds me of an old German textbook when I was young. It had a sentence in it: 'Er ist aus dem Fenster in die Stiefmütterchen runtergefallen.'

Just wondering what she had to say about that. Passing through Dutch she could have turned into small violins.

I love it!

And then you get into the tricky business of translating bad puns form one language to another.

For instance: I saw "Whisper of the heart" last week. The main character was trying to translate "Country roads" into Japanese. She made a pun by making it "concrete roads." Would the Japanese version be as funny as the English one?

(I couldn't answer that, as I have zero knowledge of the Japanese language)

Wakarimasen.

田舎道 (Inakamichi) or コンクリート道路 (Konkurīto dōro)? That's the question.

They obviously borrowed Konkurīto (concrete), as it has been spelled out, rather than having its own symbol.

Yes, that would work.