We watched a great old movie last night, All the King’s Men; the original 1949 version with Broderick Crawford, based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren. For some reason, we’d never seen it before. Filmed in black and white and gritty – almost film noir – it’s a powerful statement about politics and corruption. In fact, I kept looking at Don throughout the movie as things were happening that were all too similar to what we are seeing in Washington. The narrator says something towards the end about Willie Stark, the corrupt politician. I’m paraphrasing: Willie knew that you could say anything over and over again and people would believe it.
Sound familiar?
If you watch it, watch this version. There’s a recent remake with Sean Penn, but it can’t hold a candle to the original. Crawford is great. He won the Oscar for his performance. It’s currently available on TCM On Demand.
I saw this when I opened the front door yesterday morning. It’s all in the light, isn’t it? Later that day, I couldn’t see it at all.
Amazingly detailed work.
This coleus is starting to grow spikes with little purple flowers.
I have become a coleus fan. There are so many variations and they’re all beautiful.
Nothing beats Mother Nature for sheer beauty.
We’re going to do some photo shooting on location today. That sounds awfully official, but it just means that we’re going into the next town to take some pictures. And then I’m going to start in on mowing. Yesterday I caught up with weed whacking. Mowing and weed whacking have been on hold because of the heat and humidity and rain. It’s beginning to look a little tidier around here.
It’s a gorgeous day today.
Happy Thursday.
thanks for the movie recommendation. can’t think of any remake that i’ve ever liked more than the original. i don’t have cable, but will try to track it down and watch it somehow. or maybe read the book.
and wish i could say about trump et al, “it’s only a movie … it’s only a movie …”
…
enjoy your photo excursion. it sounds fun!
kathy in iowa
If only it was only a movie!
Coleus are so pretty! When I lived in Berlin, I started with one plant I had gotten at a yardsale. When the plant would branch, I would pinch the top, plant it and then have another plant. I used disposable party cups. Soon I had plants on all the window ledges! When they got big, I would plant them in a normal pot. The air quality was horrid in Berlin when I lived there, so coleous and airplane plants were everywhere in my apartment!
I hope you guys have a great photo shoot today! Your adventures are amazing!
Plants make an enormous difference; to our serenity and to air quality, as well!
Oh yes…photo shoot sounds very official. But, it’ll be good practice for when Don turns pro!
It’s been glorious here weather wise…cool breezy mornings, so we’ve been enjoying that. But…rain is predicted for a few days…so we have to hurry up with the yard work. Have fun today! ;)
Beautiful here, too, for the past two days. We have rain coming this weekend, but I won’t complain, as we really need it. The rivers are very low right now.
I believe I’ve seen this movie (the original) but it’s so timely should watch again. Enjoy your day out and photography. it’s overcast here but I’ve so much laundry and indoor house chores to catch up on I’ll just stay in and do them. I love coleus and the varieties are endless it seems!
Coleus (something I never particularly cared for before) has become endlessly fascinating!
Hi Claudia,
My mother always pinched those blossoms off the coleus because she said they would go to seed and removing them kept the plant fuller. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do it as a habit. Coleuses are so amazing & we’re fortunate that we can grow them year round here, but in pots because of the nematodes in our soil.
Enjoy!
Since these are potted, I don’t really need to pinch them. And they’re doing incredibly well, so I’m happy. They’re annuals here, of course. Thanks, Cara!
That spider web is a little miracle! Fascinating! I totally understand Don’s struggle with learning something new. It’s so much harder as we age, I’ve noticed. Not impossible, but much slower going than when we were younger. Happy shooting today, to you both! Such a lovely are to explore, upstate NY is.
He’s doing well, and yesterday’s excursion really helped his confidence.
Grrrr. Make that “area” to explore!
xo
Tis gorgeous today, isn’t it? Any Summer day without an ounce of humidity & a faultless sky is gorgeous to me. But bring in that humidity & I’m useless. Love your coleus – my Mom had several in our house for years and was a big fan. Yours look just like hers did. Love “All the King’s Men” too. Very timely, as you said. Another movie that reminds me of our current “situation” is “A Face in the Crowd” – highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it. PS – who knew wonderful Andy Griffith could be so scummy? He did a great job in that role. Have fun taking pictures tomorrow! Peace.
I’ve seen A Face in the Crowd. You’re right, it’s also very timely.
All the coleus I had in my college apartment succombes to aphids. I never grew hem again, but do admire them in other people’s horticulture. Have fun taking photos!
They’re outside, of course, and I haven’t seen any aphids yet. Fingers crossed!
I just came in from mowing and trimming in the front of the house. I felt since it is a little cooler today i better do it now. The coleus are lovely. That spider web is fascinating.
Marilyn
Yes, grab the opportunity when it’s cooler, Marilyn!
So nice that you have a great weather day for your camera adventures. We’re still fighting humidity and ants here. At 3:30 am today, we had to succumb to spot-spraying inside the house; I was so worried for my asthma, but it went okay. The ant traps were overwhelmed. I left the a/c on, as well as standing fans, to try to keep the air moving; this isn’t a desirable way to live but the ants are out of control. I am so sick of ants but nobody I know ISN’T having a problem with them.
Weed whacking is hard! It kills my husband’s back afterward.
I bought some coleus about three months ago and haven’t even taken it out of the nursery center’s pots yet, shame on me. It’s growing great in our screened-in porch (patio cover which somehow morphed into a ‘room’ but I love it; it’s like a good little mudroom and way station for the dog from outdoors to indoors); I can shield the coleus from intense sun in the afternoons in there, using an old, folding room divider we put in there. The coleus’ pop of pink in the green is so pretty, and I’ve got a deeper burgundy version as well. Coleus took a lot of abuse from me when I had a little/first apartment in my early 20s yet it just grew and grew without consistent care. Hadn’t had any for years, and then I bought these recently, so it’s been fun.
The common, get-them-anywhere plants like coleus, pothos, spider plants, ficus all do so well where I live in SoCalif, either indoors or outdoors. I’d ‘rescued’ a slew of dying spiders from a big-box store’s ‘garden center’ about five years ago – – the rep from the wholesale nursery supplier was there that day, actually taking them out of the store as discards (I said, “Oh, wow, don’t throw those away, I’ll take them!) – – and we hung them on an old iron coat rack we put out in the yard; there were like, I kid you not, 15 or 16 plants. I’d meant to of course take them out of their crowded plastic pots from the store, and then this & that happened and I didn’t. My husband took them down at one point to sit them all on the ground to either water them or move the rack or something, forgot about it as did I, and they all rooted into the ground, in their plastic pots, so we just left them and now we have a whole, thriving section against the house on the north side where there’s enough shade for them. We call it ‘the spider garden’ but, as you can see, we’re not always the most conscientious of plant owners!
Claudia, I’m in ‘heaven’; my own baby jacaranda we planted four years ago is exploding in blue-purple. I look at it up there on the hillside and just can’t believe it. It is SO gorgeous! Everything in the garden seems so ‘off’ this year and other people I know are saying the same thing. Like fruit trees which are barely producing (apricots, tangerines, peaches; just nothing). And the jacs blooming so late. Yet our young avocado tree is full of avocados and we didn’t think we’d get a yield for a couple of years yet.
To add to weirdness in my yard, I was out in it early on Tuesday and here, like descended from another world/planet, was a good-sized turtle in the middle of the just-mowed lawn. This is my rear yard, against a hillside. The thing was the size of a oversized hockey puck, the shell being like 10 inches across. I thought, what the??!! Where could it have come from? I have a totally-fenced yard; it’s a blockade. (Although we do have two small holes in the wood vertical boards in the long lengths of fencing for the feral cats to pass thru: I guess the turtle could have squeezed through them, but how?) People in my neighborhood know that I’m animal-friendly and have ‘conveniently’ dropped kittens off for me and, at my last house, a chihuahua. I thought to myself, hmmm, is this a similar case where they no longer want their turtle? Did they somehow drop it over the gate? I called my next-door neighbor, ‘do you have a new pet??’ No.
Really ragged shell around the edges, a few chunks missing as well from it, and he was very much alive, poor turtle; our weather hot of course; it’s summer; we’re in drought; no rain, ever. So, I had Animal Control come out. The officer said it was a pond turtle, badly in need of water, which I somehow sensed because I did put a shallow tray of water out for it and he was drinking when the officer went up to him, half in/half out of the tray. I guess he actually needed to be living IN water, poor thing; the officer said that’s why his shell was so damaged. He said the turtle had either been ‘out there’ for a long time or else he’d been in neglected circumstances. He took it to a local rescue center and said they’ll return the turtle to better health so he can be adopted out. I said, “Will somebody really adopt him?” And he said, yes, this time with education; that people don’t understand you can’t just bring home a tiny turtle and stick him in the backyard and that’s it; that he’ll grow and that they can MOVE, they travel, so they have to have the proper enclosure/habitat. The owner can’t just forget that a turtle like that has to have a continual, consistent water environment.
So now I keep thinking I should be the one to go adopt that turtle. I’m in protective mode. But I need a turtle like I need a hole in the head. He’d be a good pet for a kid.
Oh, poor little turtle! So neglected! Thank goodness you found him. (Maybe you should adopt him, Vicki. You’re such a good pet parent!)
Thanks, we had a big talk about it yesterday, Husband and I; he votes no and stated all the reasons why. We did make a no-more-pets policy a year ago or more. I decided I’ll check back next week and see if the turtle even survived. One problem is that I just don’t have a good place to keep him at our house. The cats and dog already have the majority of the yard. Maybe the novelty would wear off but they were all ‘way too fascinated by the turtle before we moved him into a side yard we share with a neighbor where I can’t ensure the turtle’s safety. The other side of the house is a concrete run with no access to a garden hose. I have to believe that the rescue center would know the right thing to do. I used to volunteer at another one years ago and they’d get snakes, birds, bunnies; all kinds of stuff. They always knew what to do and were very careful with their adoptions. They exist for a reason. It makes me sound pompous, that only “I” can be the right owner for an animal; but it’s not even that, it’s just that when a creature drops into my ‘realm’, I always instantly think it then has to be mine, that’s it’s my job now; like I said, I go into that protective mode thing, to shield/shelter/rehab/give something love that hadn’t had it before. Anyway…
…I’m off to the dentist now. Another sigh.
I understand the protective mode because I’m the same way.
So happy to hear about your jacaranda! Lovely!
My spider plant has recently grown even more babies. I’m thinking of hanging it soon, so it has more room to spread out.
Love those babies; I think spider plants are kinda amazing and they do look so pretty when hung, so they can cascade. All your plants are beautiful, Claudia; you’re a good plant mom.
Thank you!
Your green grass and mine are all dry, here we are having a dry winter without rain and no cold.
The lack of rain is always troubling, Edis. Take care!
I have always thought that spider webs were amazing…even as a kid I would sit and watch them do their weaving!..I usually grow some mixed types of coleus every Summer but I seem to have gotten off track this year…now that I have seen yours I am thinking that I have a pack of seeds that I could plant in a big pot of mine and see what happens!…Here’s hoping you had fun with your cameras today!!
We did, Nancy!