Sometime during college someone had an installation in the art school called Black Plastic: a human-sized maze of it, inside of which was utterly dark, dank, close, and clingy, because pollution is bad. Looking into my back yard now, I am reminded of that, except in blue.
A blue plastic tarp covers the woodpile, so the wood will be dry on those wet days when we most want a fire. A tarp covers the vegetable garden so that it does not serve as a catshitter of massive proportions all winter long. A folded one covers the lasagne mulch so that bindweed cannot grow up through it, although maybe I can take that off now for the winter. Another is under the remaining pile of needles and sunflower seed husks that have not found their way into lasagne mulches yet.
The most prominent tarp is that covering the brand-new leaf pile. Yesterday I very carefully groomed the front gardens and easement. The vinca is thriving, sending out shoots and sprouting all around. I'm very pleased. I took out the groundcloth so it could spread and battled bindweed thereafter; I'm hoping that after a few seasons of my assiduous plucking, the vinca will dominate on its own. It's tangled enough that getting the leaves out without ripping out shoots that haven't rooted yet was a quite delicate task. I can't wait to plant the other easement, because under that plum tree bare dirt plumes up from the rake's tines. I worked with rake and hands in the north front garden, trying to get leaves without mulch and not hurting the plants; I was less gentle in the better established south front garden and to the catmint I showed no mercy. Raking the north side of the house was easy, since it's covered in landscaping cloth. The south side was extremely rewarding, with two trees protected from the wind dropping all their leaves into a thick carpet whose absence made such stark contrast that I knew I was done. I did just a bit in the back yard, the south fence and the raspberries: the cherry tree hasn't dropped its leaves yet and I'm all about not duplicating effort. All of this made quite a pile, artfully crafted to touch neither the fence nor the garage and rot them by contact. I soaked it, shrinking it by a quarter at least, but it's still about four feet high.
I need to get yet more coffee grounds and vegetable pulp to wed the leaves with, to create the child, dirt.
RDC and SPM saw Phil Lesh & Friends at the Fillmore last night. This morning, with the remnants of his voice, RDC told of how they were tighter than the Dead ever were. "Because Bobby wasn't there," I said. I don't like Phil Lesh's own songs much: they're just basic rock and roll and not very interesting to me. But his covers of Garcia/Hunter and Weir/Barlow songs are fantastic. Phil can't sing and neither could Bobby but at least Phil knows enough to rely on other vocalists.
I'm extremely fond of SPM, and yesterday evening I discovered--for the first time?--something that made me fonder: love of '80s music, in addition to, not exclusive of, Deadheadism. We played 30-second iTunes snippets of Level 42 and Howard Jones and a-Ha and Toto and Asia and did not quite drive RDC screaming from the room, but nearly.
But then it all came crumbling down. As they got ready to leave, RDC pulled his--my!--leather jacket from the closet. "But what will I wear?" I asked. "Not this!" he replied merrily. "But it'll get all smoky!" I whined. SPM erkled: his jacket, lined in sheepskin, would also pick up a lot of smoke. He put it on: a corduroy jean jacket. I remarked that looking like Ponyboy Curtis should be some consolation (N.B.: except for the jacket, he doesn't, being tall, stocky, short-haired, and 20 years older), and just to stay out of old churches. But SPM didn't know who Ponyboy Curtis is at all! And when I said The Outsiders, he only knew the movie, not the book.
I wanted the leather jacket because I was going to a Howard Dean birthday party (i.e. fundraiser). My whine that it would get smoky at the concert but presumably not at the party held no water: when I got home I stripped in the living room and dashed into the shower and I am so glad I didn't wear contacts because lordy do people still smoke. The party happened in a Capitol Hill apartment, a great space with a porch facing west, oak woodwork that had never been painted over, a fireplace with shelves on one side and an inglenook on the other, and I was the only woman and nearly the only straight person. That was kind of interesting.
One man admitted to knowing little about Dean but asked questions about his background and stances and I told him my focus: not that his policies are secondary, but Dean wants to return the process to the people instead of corporate interests and that is his primary appeal for me.
He's shorter than Bush fils, though. Historically, the taller candidate has won. Gore is taller, and Gore won, but Bush proved that the rule of tall as well as the rule of law can be toppled. So maybe Dean has a chance.