Reading: Age of Innocence

Moving: 40': 4.25 miles

Listening: work out mix

Watching: most recently, "Clerks"

House: cleaned the hardwood floors of dining room and kitchen with special, alleged not to damage, hardwood floor cleaner. It's amazing what the stuff picks up.

24 January 2001: Fountain

I don't know what led me to reread a bunch of We the Living over the past couple of days. It frightens me that I used to find it so romantic. I did have one iota of sense, though: from my very first reading, virginal as my life was long, I had no idea what Rand wanted us to think when the woman asks Kira what she uses to keep from having children and Kira just stares at her. I don't think Rand ever really appreciated the fact that not everyone who went through the revolution survived in sterility as she and Emma Goldman did. Actually Emma Goldman is earlier (as I have just been reminded by reading Ragtime) but she also was malnourished through her teens and also wound up sterile. In neither case was this proven cause and effect but it seems possible. Both Rand and Goldman later advocated free love, however different their politics were, and I find it ohsoconvenient for them to have professed it before reliable birth control made it slightly more convenient for everyone else.

Anyway. Rand. And Columbine and I have been talking books a bit, and unfortunately the one Rand novel--this came up because of the Modern Library readers listing all four Rand novels in the top ten books of the century, gack--I have a question about is the one he hasn't read. No, really, I want a Rand fan to explain this to me. I know what Kira was like in bed with Andrei, whom she slept with to fund Leo's stay in a sanitarium. And everybody knows Dagny just loved being raped by all three of her men. And Dominique by Roark. I swear I'd've feared to step into an Objectivist gathering without a chastity belt.

I took a lot of notes on The Bar Sinister, which was a worse waste of my time than Sons and Lovers (as I'm sure Lawrence would be relieved to know). Why on it rather than on any of the good novels I've been reading? Because I can! Because I'm a bully! Because it's easier to pick on such a target. One day I'll transcribe them maybe. It's well criticized at Pemberley.com

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Last night I went to a reception at the Botanic Gardens for new members. I talked to two women who vow they can identify my tree, even just by the bark. I don't know how they could do that, as my description of its leaves and bark and especially its fragrance didn't ring any bells. But I'm going to find that tree, damn it, and then I'm going to plant one in the southwest corner of our lot where it can shade us from the sun (in 20 years or so) without (I hope) destroying the foundation (or at least not for another 20 years or so). I would love to have it outside the bedroom but then I'd endanger our neighbors' foundation as well as our own.

Also I registered for a class called Garden Design for Novices. The last line in the course description is "This course is meant for people who want to begin their own gardens but have no idea how." That's what I want. I've spent several pleasant evenings with High Country Gardens catalogs.

I don't think it should be too hard to build a frame for a raised bed for vegetables. RDC has ideas about an irrigration grid made of PVC pipe, but I'm going to assume that won't happen at least not in the first season.

The other project this year is the easement. I want to turn over all the grass, add mulch, and plant agastache and lavender. I need to find out if I can just turn it all over, add landscaping cloth, a few inches of mulch, and then dig through mulch and cut through cloth to plant my shrubs. If I were putting in other ground cover I'd be more careful to ensure the grass was dead. I'll have to do that under the cherry tree when I put in the thyme or sweet woodruff.

Bad news: I've been saying AH-ga-STAH-chee and last night learned it's ah-GOS-tah-key. Or something. I was assuming the name was native American in origin but apparently it's Latin.