Wet and wordy

The drought has finally broken.  One day we had four different rain events, ranging from drizzle to a thunderstorm.  The gardens are responding with vigor.  We are still worried about tomatoes because while we have hundreds of blossoms, we seem to be short on bees to pollinate them. But beans, yellow squash, peppers are all so abundant we have to give some away. We’re getting ready for our annual personal narrative workshop at Omega.  Every year we tweak it some to keep it fresh.  Friday morning we’ll leave to teach to first session that evening.  It’s a craft workshop with talks, examples, exercises and lots of feedback.  Afterwards, participants are invited to join an online group where they can share their work with others and get feedback. We’re putting out the cole crops I started about a month ago.  They’ve been growing on the sunporch under protection as Xena, the youngest and biggest cat, decided that cucumber plants were tasty indeed and cabbage plants weren’t too shabby as an appetizer. We did terribly on beets.  Just tiny red balls the size of marbles, although we harvested over a pound of beet greens.  We’ll have to move them next year. Even great gardeners like us screw up and the garden also does what it pleases – lots of cucumbers one year, hardly any the next.  Few zucchini one year, we’re buried in an avalanche the next. I’ve written three new short stories.  The third one I want to go over again this week before we drive to Omega – it’s near Rhinebeck on the Hudson, although it’s inland on a lake. The new stories: one is about my grandmother, the second about a lesbian couple where one is getting alsheimers, the third is about one of my cats. I have an idea for another but can’t get to it until well into August. I have until May first of next year to put together the short story collection.  That’s when PM Press has to have it complete in order to bring it out in spring 2014.  It’s not a lot of time for what I have to do.  I still need to revise at least three old stories and write at least five new ones. I’m enjoying working on short stories, since it’s at least 20 years since I wrote any.  I had forgotten how much I like the genre.  Of course I’m also writing new poems, but at a slightly slower rate than before I began the stories. This morning I am washing sheets and towels and making tabouli.  And when I finish writing this, I’ll begin going over that new story about a cat. It’s grey today and muggy, but on the cool side. When it’s this humid and hot, the way it was a couple of days ago, I want to crawl inside an air conditioner and go to sleep.  Today in spite of the gloom, I’m energized.