just finished wodehouse's the mating season.

pg wodehouse was captured by the germans in ww2 and held prisoner for a long time (although maybe it was under house arrest?).  he wasn't released until he had done some kind of... radio announcements or something for them (my reading about this has been sketchy to say the least).  after that, a lot of other british people made england too hot to hold him until he finally permanently relocated to america, a fact he was somewhat bitter about.  he was fond of america before that too, but the references increase in the later jeeves & woosters. 

one of his biggest detractors in england was aa milne, a writer whose work, particularly winnie the pooh, wodehouse held in some contempt.  i love the pooh books, but he mocks them to great effect in the mating season (which hasn't been re-issued with the cartoony cover yet, so for those of you who haven't obtained a copy let me say that madeline bassett is a big fan of "christopher robin poems"). 

the mating season was the last novel i was certain i didn't have.  i'm not positive about jeeves in the offing/how right you are, jeeves--i've got it marked off as already ordered on a list i was keeping but i can't for the life of me remember actually holding it in my hot little hands.  and then again, on the numerous occasions when i've cracked it open in the bookstore, the prose has looked familiar (but then, it would anyway, wouldn't it?).  perhaps i have it in an omnibus.  i can't check until my parents mail more books to me. 

scenery

i've been moaning for a long time that there were no wildflowers.  finally! the day before yesterday i was stumbling on dandelions gone to seed and today the grassy hills of the river walk were alive with bright dandelions and other yellow flowers i've never seen before.  for a while i walked with one stuck over my ear, maybe half an hour or forty-five minutes.  then a bee started buzzing around my head.  i couldn't figure out why a bee was doing laps around me until i remembered the dandelion and, sadly, flung it on the ground.

tramping with a dog down this narrow little path right next to the river, finding the way up and down these steep grassy hills and picking through thickets and these little clusters of trees while the birds trill feverishly in a sexual frenzy!  spring has sprung, and it's glorious.

i wish i had a camera.

the plan was to spread my jacket out and read a book in the sun on some grassy hillside made private by the rising of other hilly bits around it, while the dog dozed peacefully in the grass, tongue lolling.  it didn't work out because the dog got impatient to explore--he wasn't in the mood for any lolling about.  and then the sun went behind a cloud and it started to get slightly chillier, but my jacket was full of fragments of grass.  so i read the introduction and, like, five more pages of the mists of avalon, and then i quit.  but boy is the dog happy.