April 24, 2014

Sense of well-being slightly mitigated by the lack of a sense of accomplishment. My interview yesterday turned out to be at Pack Library. They told me I did well, though I felt I was spending a lot of energy making up in elegance for what I lacked in actual information. Had determined to buy some art, but nothing I saw in Blue Spiral tempted me this time. I did go to Village Antiques and bought a beautiful greenish table that completes my kitchen. They were kind and solicitous, and I realized I knew them and had not taken a good look. Stopped at the riverside and acquired two pitchers, to support my new determination to have necessary liquids housed as elegantly as possible. Planted a few mayapples, a white columbine, and dug up from 62 probably the last of what I’ll dig up: a golden tree peony, another kind of peony, and an iris which I think is nearly black.  Will has engineers coming out to look, and if he expands the house he must retract the garden, and I would save as much as I can. The helebores have grown too huge to transplant. Perhaps they will divide. I pick at little things, wondering, now, what the great thing is. Even a wild wolf like myself sits down on his haunches if rebuked too often.

News from Hiram: my old botany professor Dwight Berg has died at the age of 98. His class dwells in memory as one where I actually learned things which I remember to this day. His description of flower sex was classic: “and the pollen leaves the stamen and flies through the air with the greatest of ease–“