Early Spring

Spring seems to have come early here after an atypically mild winter with almost no snow.  Last year we got socked with lots of storms, ice and snow, and spring was tardy.  I’ve had crocuses and witch hazel in bloom for weeks.  I’m starting tomatoes with week to go into the greenhouse – it’s as small a greenhouse as you can get, but it makes seed starting much easier and it’s fun to hang out there.I am working very hard to finish a polished draft of a new novel I’m calling End Game.  If it sells, there’s no guessing what a publisher will name it.  Almost all my novels after the first few were retitled by publishers.  I was just doing research on used sailboats.   I know nothing about sailing but one of my minor characters does.  I asked my friend Captain Ramon and he set me on catboats.  That seems appropriate for me, as we have six cats. I studied them on line.I was only on a sailboat twice in my life.  The first time, the owner kept yelling obscure terms at me and I had no idea what to do except to duck when the whatever it is came swinging around trying to decapitate me.  The second time I was in a sailboat, we got becalmed on Smalley Bar with a storm coming on.  I wrote a poem about it.  On Smalley Bar.  It’s out in Wellfleet Bay—the bar, not the poem.  I’ve been on big ships not infrequently, but that exhausts my experience with those that depend on wind, even though we have friends who have various kinds of boats, including a steam-powered tugboat one friend built himself.I’ve been writing poems, as usual, although not so many the past few weeks. I’m pushing really hard to get the novel done so it can go to my agent and I can move on to the next project.  And into the spring garden.  And back to poetry.