Well, those deer with the munchies may have prevented most of my tulips from reaching their full potential, but about 5 still managed to bloom in my front garden. (I bought some repellent spray so this won’t happen again!) The few that remain look really nice–I am enjoying this great weather we are having here in Ohio! I’m also planting some violas that my mom gave me in my planters out front. I do like gardening, but it’s a lot of work to get good results!
If you have a Netflix account and like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, go right now immediately and watch the 2004 BBC miniseries North & South, based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. I have watched it 5 times since I discovered it a week ago (I am not exaggerating). It’s like Pride and Prejudice set in the Industrial Revolution, with a strong focus on social and economic issues.
I am now plowing through the book, but the free Kindle version does not have footnotes, so a lot of the 
literary allusions are going right over my head; I may wait to finish reading until I can get a library copy. The miniseries makes some nice editorial changes to the source material, and a memorable soundtrack plus top-notch acting make it totally addictive. It’s just under 4 hours long (I have been working on a cross-stitch project, so I multitask). I wish they had kept in a little more of the religious subject matter; it strange that the whole story is precipitated by a clergyman, now a Dissenter, uprooting his family when he leaves the church, but yet the miniseries hardly mentions religion at all. I really have no idea why Mr. Hale “dissented” at all! It would have given a much better context if they had discussed the characters’ religious views more fully. The ending is also a little anachronistic (too much PDA), but it’s not nearly so bad a change as the ending of 2006’s Pride & Prejudice, and I managed to get over that just fine. 🙂
Jedi by Knight 