Prep time

Every June I give a juried poetry intensive workshop here in Wellfleet.  Of the 80 plus poets who submit work, I choose the best 12 as I go.  I open it up December first and generally it’s filled by mid January.Now is the time I begin work on the classes, while the additional poems are coming in from the poets who were chosen.  This is my favorite of all the workshops I give every year, either alone or with Ira.  We do memoir, personal narrative together.  We call it that because we include autobiographical fiction.But this workshop contains participants I picked out myself and I teach it on a much higher level than any other.  It’s a pleasure for me because of the talented poets.  It’s set up with classes in the morning and individual conferences in the afternoon.This is also a frantic time for planting. I got the potatoes in today and the last 6 tomato plants and last 6 peppers from the greenhouse.  Tomorrow we begin on the pole beans.  At this time, this season everything has to be done yesterday.  The stuff in the greenhouse is 80% planted, but still the remaining plants want to get out, out, out.  The days are suddenly very warm but the nights are chilly.  Too soon for basil and eggplants, three kinds of basil and two of eggplants I started inside. But everything else must get into the ground.Four of my six cats spent the afternoon in the screened in gazebo and had a great time.  It’s very stimulating for indoor cats to be there, safe but experiencing all sorts of sounds and sights and smells.  Malkah is too elderly and fragile to go outside at all and Xena is too young.  The other four felt very superior after their adventure.I saw a pair of orioles today, orange and lemon.  I hope they stick around.  We had company tonight, four very good friends, Lois and Ramon and Stephen and Dale.  Dale starts working at the nighthouse as a docent this Sunday.  He showed us around a couple of years ago.  Up by the light the views are 360 and amazing.  You feel as if you could see Gibraltar over the Atlantic.  I cooked boeuf en daube provencal and we had a big salad from our garden.  We started with drinks and hors d’oeuvres on the sun porch.  Dale brought very good coffee icecream for dessert.  Lois and Ramon had just returned two nights ago from Paris.  They were using up their miles.I’ve written a couple of poems this week in spite of the heavy schedule of prepping the workshop and planting veggies.