The End of April, the beginning of salad

We finally got rain this weekend, after little snow this winter and a drought this spring.  It feels so good. The pollen has diminished.  The broccoli and spinach and lettuces are three times as large as they were Friday.  The trees have finally begun to leaf out – since leaves are made of water [like us].I sent off my new novel to my agent last Wednesday and have been playing catch up ever since.  Many clothes thrown on a chair in the bedroom.  My office floor several inches deep in papers.  Weeds flourishing in the gardens.  Cats neglected and pissed off.  But we have to leave Friday morning to teach a memoir-autobiographical novel workshop at Rowe Conference Center in northwest Massachusetts, in the Berkshires.  We have taught there many times before.When we get back Sunday night, I’ll start thinking about the Derby party we give every year, about 20 friends and lots of food. Woody makes mint juleps.  Fortunately the rain made the mint grow after I had weeded the bed a couple of days earlier.  We’ll  have more than enough for the party.  I’m still figuring out what I want to cook.  It’s next Saturday. I’m generally always writing poems, but getting the novel together, making some last minute revisions and going over all of it pushed poetry out of the way for ten days.  Now I am getting back to it.Crab apples are in bloom all over the Outer Cape, but ours are just getting started.  The pear trees and sour cherry are in full bloom.  We have a quince that is schizophrenic – some branches have the vermillion blossoms of regular quinces and others offer pale pink blossoms that start out as white buds.We should begin to eat salads from our garden next week, when we get back from Rowe.  Our spring salads we love but they are not to everyone’s taste – lettuce, yes, but also violet flowers and leaves, sorrel, herbs like lovage and mint, the tiny bok choi leaves, red mustard.  They are not bland salads but have some bite to them.