Some Hardy Flowers

Not much news on this Thanksgiving day, since I spent yesterday mostly reading on the couch. I did get out and take some pictures in the garden, where a few hardy plants are still blooming, like the plectranthus (above) that Mrs. Kravitz discarded back in the spring. We have three hanging baskets full of them. I have no idea what we'll do with them in the winter, if anything. We may let them meet a natural end, but they've been pretty all summer.

This was a bird nest inhabited in the spring by dunnocks, in our forsythia bush. It no longer has the bowl shape that dunnock nests are supposed to have -- I don't know whether a predator tore it up or it naturally fell apart after it served its purpose. We did see young dunnocks flitting around, so I think some chicks survived and fledged.

Some of our primroses are still blooming, although they're also looking a little moth-eaten. The squirrels dug up one of my favorites, a bright magenta one. I'm trying to save it but who knows. (Primroses are a dime a dozen in the spring so I can always get more!)

Finally, that Chinese lantern plant I bought a month ago has died back -- hopefully to regrow in the spring. There's also a borage plant and a purple verbena in this pot that sprouted from seed. Many of our pots are like this -- all kinds of stuff growing in them. I'm not a big believer in weeding, because sometimes those "weeds" do interesting things.

Dave and I watched "Hillbilly Elegy" on Netflix last night. The movie's gotten a bad rap, but I thought it was pretty good. The book, by J.D. Vance, had a sociological side, talking not just about the author's life but about the regional issues facing many of his friends and neighbors. The movie is more strictly autobiographical, but there's footage of the shuttered shops and factories in his rather desperate little town which is surely meant to convey the wider issues. I suppose the movie could be branded classist and elitist – "redneck" lifestyle porn produced by interlopers from New York and California – but it's also Vance's story, and he's credited in its production, so that seems to weaken that argument. It's well-acted, although poor Amy Adams mostly screams and cries – she must have been exhausted when the filming was over. Anyway, I didn't think it was bad.