Wet, wetter, wettest

After drought this winter and spring, it rains now most days.  When it isn’t raining, the wind blows hard.  When the wind isn’t knocking the leaves around, it drizzles.  I know it will be hot again soon and I will hope for rain, but at the moment, it’s too much of a generally good thing.I am going through the portfolios of poems of the poets I accepted into my juried intensive poetry workshop and annotating the poems.  I finish each group of work with general suggestions for improvement.I try to imagine what each person will be like when I meet and work with them.  On the Ning social network that Ira sets up after the workshop is filled, usually at the end of January, I ask people to tell us about themselves, so I have some idea who they are.  But there are always surprises.  Usually good ones. Occasionally someone turns out to be disruptive or on the crazy side. But by and large I stay in touch with most of them.  After the class, they usually get published if they haven’t before.The gardens, vegetable, fruit and flowers grow almost visibly.  I love peonies and several of them have been in bloom for some time.  Their scent almost makes me drunk. The roses are coming out too, in spite of the rain. We have about 45 or so rose bushes, none of them the usual hybrid teas and only one floribunda.  We don’t spray or use chemical fertilizers, so I go in for old fashioned roses and modern roses bred for hardiness, most bush roses and climbers.  Most of them, except for Radler’s, have heavy scent.  The rhododendrons are all in bloom on the east side of the house.  They are mostly big, almost rhododendron trees  with those big balls of flowers, white, pink, purple, red, yellow.  I can’t grow azaleas here – too muc wind I suspect – but rhododendrons flourish.  When I planted them many years ago, they were a few inches high.Ira gave a reading last night at the library, a preview from his new book that will be out this summer, You’re Married to Her?  He got an overflow crowd and I have already heard from a dozen people how good he was. This book is very funny and he performs it well.Two of my six cats are hyperthyroid. I never had a hyperthyroid cat before.  I suspect it is one of those damned additives they stick in canned or dry catfood.I am using different therapies.  The eldest, Malkah, get medicine twice a day, orally in baby food in the evening and transdermal into her ear in the morning.  She is amazingly accepting of her treatment.Sugar Ray, who is middle aged, hates being given medicine and got angry with me for torturing him with it.  He is my most soulful cat and is very loving.  Ira says he thinks he is my husband, for he is very protective.  He is going to have a one time shot of radioactive iodine. After that he should never need any medicine again.  He should be cured.  That is supposed to finish the tumor for the rest of his life.  Since he’s younger, healthier and hates to be medicated, that seemed a good way to deal with his illness. But I imagine him in a cage in Winchester – two hours and 40 minutes from us – wondering what he did wrong to received such punishment and exile.  He will think we have abandoned him to a terrible fate.  But then he should recover and be free of the medicine he fights.