Living in Gloucestershire, I worked with a local girl who used to say 'It's right Jack out there!' on frosty mornings. I don't know if this was a regional expression or something of her own.
There is new green growth, (there always is) but I've been too lazy and recalcitrant to look at it, until the frost showed it.
Foxgloves leaves unfurl again into their two year cycle, dreaming in the ice of towers of summer purple,
and buttercups never give up, stubborn, pernicious globes of sunshine that they are.
Someone gave us a bundle of these little palm plants, last year perhaps. We were rather unimpressed, stuck them in the soil and more or less forgot about them, now their splayed and folded fans of leaves are revealed more boldly,
and the evergreen ferns and mosses wait patiently on the granite.
More to come.
9 comments:
These frost photographs are beautiful, Lucy; so appealing.
Simply stunning!
(My father-in-law would refer to "that Jack Frost character" on chilly mornings.)
Jack frost, or jacked up, I wonder.
Lovely.
Jack Frost, I suspect. Beautiful photos, as always, Lucy.
Oh, how amazing! Your photos are lovely!
Thank you.
Yes, it was certainly a reference to Jack Frost, but I've not heard him used as an adjective elsewhere!
Forgive me for using your blog to post a comment that should be on mine. But you've been so generous with your comments on US English vs UK English and their implications for "translated" French English that I cannot expect you to return yet again merely to gather up the following apercu.
You will remember I raised the point about spoken American often including an unnecessary would in certain verb usages. I provided an example but it didn't get the point across and was potentially legitimate. I imagined I was the only Brit to have noticed this practice but Wikipedia was there long before me. Here's an edited version of their comment:
In conditional sentences, US spoken usage often substitutes would and would have (usually shortened to 'd and 'd have) for the simple past and for the pluperfect (If you'd leave now, you'd be on time. / If I would have [I'd've] cooked the pie we could have [could've] had it for lunch)
It is is the first part of the second example (If I would have cooked the pie...) that best exemplifies the point I was making.
Here in Herefordshire "it" frequently becomes "he" ("That gate o' yours, he's broken...") but not, as far as I know, "she".
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. Even for wee bugges and amoeba and larvae.
barrett bonden, i think i love you. i have hated the extraneous "would" for years. but then again, what i hate about people's abuse of english grammar would fit in many a tome.
i wonder if all ESL people are like me or if i'm an aberration...
Post a Comment