leene_chan | Rain Forever. (Reply)

I hear it's going to rain all week. That's both good and bad for us. Good because all our garden transplants are getting a nice watering. Bad because I can't leave my poppy pots outside until it lets up. They don't seem like they're doing too well. ;_;

This weekend Kristen and I did some serious gardening, ripping out huge clumps of orange daylilies to make room for prettier, shorter plants. We also finally divided our asters. I think we were about five years overdue for that! Once the weather clears up I'm going to try to pull out as many strawberries from the side garden as I can. Eventually I'd like to fill the whole area with irises. They're the only plants with the invasive power to combat both strawberries and oregano! I love the flower shape of bearded irises, but you can't beat the growth habit of the Japanese variety. Those are my favorites.

We got another butterfly bush this spring: Pink Delight. It's supposed to be the most awesome butterfly bush ever. :D Nanho Purple gave me so much entertainment last summer. Miss Ruby died to the ground this winter but is starting to grow back already. I hope to see a lot of butterflies this year. I know they'll all be monarchs or swallowtails, but I hope to see and photograph lots!

We're going to have three new peonies this spring: Moonstone, Cheddar Charm and Philomele. I hope that at least one of them blooms this year. Moonstone in particular is huge.

I hadn't meant to make this exclusively a gardening post. I've been working hard on writing lately. I've been having a hard time wrapping my brain around the story lately, and I thought it might help if I worked out detailed surveys for the remaining characters. It has helped quite a bit...even if it takes me a few weeks, I wonder if I should do write-ups for everyone before I go back to the main story. I'm not good at writing off the top of my head; I have to plan everything very carefully.

I also started a new rooting project, and did another playthrough of Atelier Lilie (I just loaded an old save at year 4, though, so I didn't need to go all the way through). I'm rerooting my Bluebird's Song III Miu with Lemon Blonde/Cotton Candy mesh. I had been wanting to reroot her for awhile. Her look is cute and all, but her hair is too thin or my tastes and I have the hardest time redressing redheaded dolls. Also, I don't like having the same doll as everyone else. XD The blend suits her coloring really well; it's blond with a slight hint of apricot, and her blush is orange-toned. I will likely give her long, curly hair. I'm so pleased with the way Lili's bob turned out that I'd like to do another short-haired doll, but I doubt it will be Miu.

Since I had restarted from an old file, I only had to play for two days. I got the same ending as last time, but I gave the pendant to Gerhard, got two more videos (Gerhard's and Xiska's)and two more still pictures (the underwater one and the KariKari tree one). It is going to be very, very hard to get Lilie's Alchemy Level up to 50 by Year Seven and qualify for the True Ending. This time, I only managed to get her up to Level 42. Luckily, the True Ending isn't the only one left to me.

Both the videos were fun to watch but crappy looking. Gerhard looked pretty awful in animation, but it was funny that Lilie kept groping him in his movie. That bird had nice eyelashes, though. It reminded me of the titular character in The Last Unicorn.

In Xiska's movie, it started with a close-up on her crotch. XD

I'm starting to think that Lilie is kind of a ho around the guys in the game (obviously because it's a simulation game with as much dating sim in it as Persona 3 and 4) but at least they don't show her caressing Theo in his movie like she does to Gerhard, or stradding him like she does to Ulrich (he had just tackled her to save her from a poison arrow, but jeez!). Theo is underage, after all. I have no idea what she does with Werner. From the brief glimpse of the movie I've seen online, they're just hanging around in his shop. Unless she suddenly grabs his head and smushes it into her boobs, it's probably pretty innocuous. XD

I had taken a break from Atelier Marie, Elie and Anis because I screwed up. Now that I have a huge FAQ at my disposal, I'll probably tackle it again later.