Day: April 7, 2018

Three sentence movie reviews: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

John Huston’s adaptation of B. Travers’s novel makes for a very good film. Not to mention Walter Huston’s performance as Howard, the gold miner who has seen everything and is surprised by nothing. This is a classic for a reason!

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home as part of my scratch-off movie poster project.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1948/treasure_of_the_sierra_madre.html
(The artist for this poster was fairly inept. It isn’t a very good likeness of Humphrey Bogart and the pictures of both Water Huston and Tim Holt look nothing like the actors.)

Our scratch off poster gave me two duds and a cool one.

Dud #1: The “before” is cool, but it leads to not much.

Dud #2: I was initially confused what had been added before I realized the umbrella wasn’t there in the original. And yes, there is rain, but this is such an iconic image from this movie, my brain had filled in the rain automatically.

Now we’re talking.

Do you want to scratch your movie poster itch? Get the scratch off poster here.

Backyard redo: establishing shots

I’m taking classes to obtain a Copyediting certificate, and my course is four quarters long. After the first quarter, I decided to finish the course using an every-other-quarter approach. This turned out to be brilliant, because it means that I spend three months doing schoolwork and then have three months to complete a house project. Projects that would normally be started and then put off get done because I’ve only got three months until homework takes over my free time.

The side yard was the project between Grammar Lab and Copyediting I. Now we will redo the back yard as a bridge between Copyediting I and Copyediting II.

Here’s what we have to work with. In the fall I gave away the espaliered apple trees and we made a mound of dirt in the back corner because we had to excavate dirt from the side yard in order to put in the path. In the late winter I took down all the poles where the espaliered apple trees were and I also took down the bat box. We also disassembled the raised beds and the boards are still sitting there. Plus, the wheat I didn’t mean to grow last year has spread.

In short, the backyard needs some cleaning up before we start on the project.

A view from the edge of the new side yard path. On the left will be new plantings of asparagus, doubling the asparagus production for the yard. (!!!)  In the middle will be hardscaping of some sort.  Maybe flagstone?  We shall see what the budget allows.

From the back corner.  The right side will be the aforementioned asparagus. The left side will have something planted that is yet to be determined.  The already existing raspberry bush, blueberry bushes and contorted quince will stay.

I might be overly optimistic, but I think this might be an easier project than the side yard.  It’s a smaller space, for one.  Also, we know better what we are doing when laying stone.