Don’t worry, this is not a liberal rant.
YOU MAY THINK THOSE LITTLE SQUIRRELS ARE CUTE, WITH THEIR LITTLE FLUFFY TAILS AND THEIR DARLING FACES, KENNETH, BUT YOU ARE WRONG WRONG WRONG THEY ARE THE DEMON SPAWN OF BEELZEBUB HIMSELF.
This is what the new grass in the labyrinth looks like:
Dozens of little potholes:
MAY THEY ROAST IN HELL.
Thank you for listening.
Today we did something fun. My lovely first wife had inherited an original engraving of one of her ancestresses:
…and wanted it hung in the more Victorian of the two guestrooms.
Here’s the fun part: the frame had an old, handmade brass loop, like so…
…which mean that whatever it was hanging from would be visible.
Fortunately—and I didn’t know this until today—there is such a thing as a Victorian picture nail. You can see some lovely examples here. Upon seeing them, the LFW asked if we might not make our own. “Use what we have,” is our new motto, and boy, some of you are getting some pretty bizarre objects as gifts for the next decade.
Anyway, I conceived a plan.
First, decide where to put the hanger on the wall. Easy, just hold the painting up to the wall and put a dot where the loop is.
Except the loop didn’t stand up by itself, preferring to slip down behind the painting.
And so…
Loop stabilized, dot made on the wall, and…
That’s right, a plain flat-head screw. Now all we needed was something appropriate…
…like a handpainted Czechoslovakian ceramic brooch.
The reverse:
Hang the etching on the screw. Heat up the hotglue gun, put a dab on the screw, and…
Tada!
Frippery upon frippery, eh wot?
This was a pleasant surprise. I had decided, you may recall, to claw out a place from the very back corner in the southwest. It was previously just a jungle of ivy and whatever volunteer plants sprang up. I had planted a variety of ferns there over the years, but the ivy choked out everything not at the edge of the planting.
So when the fence builders ripped out all the ivy, I decided not to let it grow back.1 My plan was to pave over it with the same flagstone I used in the fire pit area and to create a little nook of some kind.
And…
All in all, a pretty spectacular little spot.
The stand is a bird cage stand. We think we will find some kind of hanging lantern that can go on it. (Since taking that photo, I’ve moved it to the other side of the block wall in order to clear more space in the nook.)
And look at that planter I found when I went to buy the flagstone at Mulch & More!
I think I’m not planting anything in it. It’s just delightful/provocative enough by itself.
—————
1 Yes, I know it will grow back. I am prepared to do battle.
This was fun.
First of all, at Home Depot when I went to load the 12 bags of top soil into my car, I discovered this guy:
Thinking that there were too many ways for him to come to grief in his current setting, I scooped him up and brought him home. There was a moment of panic when I carefully unloaded the car and he wasn’t there—what if he had decided to burrow under the seats and die?—but I found him and as you can see he’s fairly content to be my friend. He finally leapt to my shoulder and from there to the hostia by the southpoint. I haven’t seen him since, but he should be fine.
You will recall from yesterday that I had begun the mini-terrace at the southwest corner.
I decided to lower the far range of blocks so that the border bricks were all on one level. I could have done that by dismantling the whole thing and digging a deeper foundation, but I found it easier just to replace the concrete blocks with others half their height.
After I got the whole thing walled in and filled in, I stepped back and took a good look at it.
Those who know the Lichtenbergianism process know that it’s time for GESTALT and SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION. My thinking was that the sinuous outline of the terrace was lame. It did not resonate. Its woo factor was pitifully low.
So I fixed it.
Still some adjusting to be done—brick-cutting, etc.—but on the whole I think it’s much better.
Long shot:
I am halfway considering paving that circle around the tree with flagstones like the fire pit and the back corner, but that won’t be until the spring.
I also have concerns that the brick edging is precarious: a slight misstep will knock them off. If I weren’t so averse to permanence I’d cut them to fit and then cement them in place. Oh well, if that becomes necessary at some point in the future, we can do that.
Next up: the back corner.
America, you are A Idiot.
This is all I am going to say about it: you elected George W. Bush because he was a manly chest-thumping cretin, and it got you the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a budget surplus turned into a record deficit, ruinous tax cuts, and the Great Recession.
Now you’ve done worse.
Back at work on the Great Labyrinth Reclamation Project, this time on the southwest corner.
You may recall that the new fence, in cutting a straight line from one corner to the other, cut off some of my “landscaping” at the far end of the labyrinth, and so I am having to revamp that corner. It’s always been problematic in that the bricks that I used to create a border were continually being covered over by soil washing down the little slope there.
So my plan is to build a small wall and fill that in with dirt.
Here’s the bottom layer of wall:
And more:
I didn’t buy quite enough blocks, so back to Home Depot today. I will also buy the fill dirt to put in there and then seed it.
Meanwhile that back corner will become a nook of some kind:
I already had two large pieces of fieldstone, so I went ahead and put them down. I’ll get to this area later this week.
Onward!
I bought a timer for the sprinkler last week—none of the timers I had bought previously worked, of course—and so the labyrinth was watered while I was on Lichtenbergian Retreat last weekend. When I got home on Sunday, I went to check on things and was astonished to find:
The grass seed has already sprouted!
Now to keep it alive for another four weeks…
1:32 p.m.:
I’ve been working all morning, just futzing around with some sounds for the opening of SUN TRUE FIRE. Think the opening to Das Rheingold, or to Kevin Puts’ Symphony No. 2. Slow, low strings, building to some kind of crescendo…
I want to structure the entire work around the idea of a ritual: INVOCATION/CALL — AGONS (QUESTIONS, ENCOUNTERS, PROPHECIES) — REVELATION — RESOLUTION. The opening needs to introduce us to the mystical landscape we’re about to enter, and then we will have some great pillars of sound, with a solo tenor calling us: “drunk among them, lead the way a clear voice way…”
Of what I’ve written today, here’s what’s worth sharing: STF opening abortive attempt
(I think it’s nice, and I think it would come after a longer buildup before this point. It may go different paths than what I’ve indicated here.)
9:30 a.m.
I’ve rewritten the Chorale from the Christmas Carol “Christmas Present Street Scene.” Its weirdo chromaticism wasn’t ever really a problem, but the ending was always dicey since the sopranos had to sing high and divisi.
This rewrite had to begin with the same melodic phrase, which reappears before “Hey, boy, what day is today?” in the Finale and which was not problematic anyway. In general, I’ve kept the first parts of the two verses the same, just monkeying with the endings so that they don’t climb too high for inexperienced singers.
So the Abortive Attempt is done. I’ll set it aside and let it annoy me again later.
Oh, you’d like to hear it? Here.
11:36 a.m.
SUN TRUE FIRE. hoo boy.
Lots of scribbled notes—on paper even! Just chords, bass lines, interesting combinations. Nothing serious yet. No real text set, although I think I’m zeroing in on verse IX. Big Case as my first target.
However, here’s a lovely little bit, almost an Easier Piece in its simplicity. It may end up in XI. The Azure Stone (Resolution). Listen.
1:33 p.m.:
Here’s a cute little two-part waltz. I truly am just plopping out random notes without worrying about whether they’re ever going to wind up being usable in SUN TRUE FIRE.
3:05 p.m.:
Lots of little bits, nothing more to share.
It’s time to hit the hot tub for a bit.
