2001-05-29 - 10:44 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Something", Beatles

Here I go yammering about my garden again. If this is boring you to death, feel free to write and say, "Why aren't you talking about X instead?", where X is the topic of your choice. Maybe you liked it better when I was yelling at Jonah Goldberg or talking about waxing. I'm all about being interactive.

I do, however, have a few things to talk about involving looks vs. attractiveness and the "Cowboy Timmy" concept, and I am trying to force myself to write about them by mentioning it here in advance. Nags welcome.

When the hell did I get so emotional about plants?!?!

I put in my summer garden yesterday and now I am hovering over it, fussing like a mother hen. Next thing you know I'll be naming plants and calling them "my children" the way some people do about their pets. Somebody just shoot me if I do that.

So, it all started on Sunday when I went out to the herb place (Debaggio's) with Michelle on Sunday afternoon, after getting caught in a torrentous downpour when I first arrived at her place.

The sunshine came back right about when we arrived in Loudoun County. I was insanely happy (see what I mean about emotional), sniffing all the herbs and picking mine out. Michelle got a bunch of interesting ones, unusual varieties of well-known herbs, some of which I'd never heard before. I stuck with the basics: mint, basil, cilantro, sage, rosemary, parsley, Italian parsley.

She showed me her apartment and her little herb garden on the balcony and I was enormously impressed. She's got a bunch of attractive square pots and troughs and it all looks very pretty, plus it's edible. I loved the "girliness" of her apartment -- lots of flowers and feminine touches, unlike the Poindexter-influenced masculinity of our living room. I think I need to work more on decorating the bedroom and guest suite (the rooms where my girliness is allowed) to be pleasing like that.

We went to look at the VWs. The New Beetle is kewwwwwwwwl. Surprisingly roomy inside.

Not a single salesman came to talk to us. Fuckers. She said she wouldn't be buying her car there.

Why does that happen? There were a few salesmen looking like they needed something to do, and they completely ignored us. Did we look too young? Too female? Too casually-dressed? Not rich enough? If they didn't think we looked like we could afford these cars, they have a lot to learn about high-tech jobs and the Modern American Woman.

We finished off our happy afternoon with dinner at the Lebanese Taverna. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. There was a lot of eyes-closed-in-rapture and "mmm, mmm, oh my god this is so good" going on. If you like food with a lot of intense flavor, I can't recommend this place highly enough.

I had a very happy moment in the car when I discovered the theme from "Grease" playing on the radio. I get about one good song ("good" meaning "I like it") a week on the radio if I'm lucky.

Monday morning, I went on half a skate and saw a few memorials. The African-American Civil War Memorial, the Navy Memorial, and the First Infantry Memorial for WWI, I think it was, before I left the skate to go plant shopping.

The African-American memorial was the most moving to me. It had a sculpture with soldiers on one side, and ordinary people on the other, representing their wives, mothers, and children. It had the names of the 200,000-plus African-American soldiers who fought in the war, by regiment.

The Navy memorial was amazing. It's a big round granite plaza surrounded by fountains set in arcs. The plaza was in two different shades of granite, and at first I thought the darker granite was wet pavement, since there was no apparent pattern to the design. I was staring at the plaza, trying to figure out what it was supposed to be, when suddenly I saw a dark patch and thought, hm, that splotch looks like the Great Lakes.

Then I realized, hey, that IS the Great Lakes, and I'm standing in the middle of the United States of America. The dark granite was water, and the light granite land. The entire Western Hemisphere was there -- the Americas, Europe, Africa, part of the former U.S.S.R. I skated around, amusing myself thinking "I'm crossing the Atlantic! I'm standing on Spain! That's the Baltic Sea!" You can see an aerial view (in which the design is readily apparent) here

Back on the whole Memorial thing, though: I was thinking a lot about these people who believed in their country enough to fight for it, and even to die for it. What kind of person does it take to do that? I don't know that I have the guts to do such a thing. But if we were directly attacked ... imagine if you had to worry about bombs dropping on your house, or soldiers razing their way through your city. It's impossible to imagine, isn't it? If it came down to something like that, though, maybe I could do it. Maybe those people who fought in Korea and Vietnam really believed that they were saving their country from tyranny by preventing the spread of Communism.

Sunday afternoon, I went to the nursery and lost my head.

There were cool flowers everywhere. I was practically skipping, and I know I was walking around with a big grin on my face, going "oooh, look!" to myself.

The nursery, Nall's, is very cool. They have Radio Flyer wagons for you to pull your plants around in. I love it. I filled two wagons with my stuff. I actually had more, but ended up putting some back because I was getting carried away.

Then I spent from 4 to 10pm, with only a short dinner break, working to get those plants in the ground, including digging a four-foot-long, two-feet-deep and -wide ditch in the ROCK-INFESTED CLAY THAT IS THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. I did it so I had really healthy soil for the rose bush Alicia gave me and the perennials I bought. The rest of the garden just has six inches of topsoil for the annuals and herbs.

Yes, I am crazy. I get a bug up my ass about doing something in the garden and then won't stop to rest until it's finished. Probably because I know if I don't finish it right then, it'll never get done.

This story really requires some pictures, but my digital camera is on the fritz (Kevin, you're in trouble. ;) ) so I'll tell it later if I can get it to work again. We had a few pointers from the tech support at Olympus which involve resetting the camera and waiting 24 hours, so keep your fingers crossed.

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