Winter Pleasures
I sometimes wonder who if anyone reads this blog. In any event, during February and only February for the rest of the year, I will take questions on writing. I’ll try to answer them in the next week’s blog, if any come in. I have no idea if this will be useful to anybody, but I thought I would try it. We had a brief January thaw and the snow is gone, but we’re expecting more this weekend. I’ll be counting birds at the feeders for Massachusetts Audubon’s annual count. We usually get about eight or so kinds of birds on a daily or semi-daily basis --small birds usually except for the ground feeding wild turkeys. Four of my friends have cancer as well as my niece, all of them younger and a couple of them considerably younger than I am. It’s scary and makes me think of all the carcinogens we spew out daily into the atmosphere and that we take in with our food and our water. Two of them are in their second round of chemo after thinking they were free of cancer. One just got his diagnosis and doesn’t know what awaits him in the way of treatment, although he does know he will have to have surgery. I fear for them all, even though I have friends who have gone through the treatment and are still some years later – ten years in two cases – in “remission” which I guess means so far, so good. In February, Wellfleet tends to clear out a bit – not the summer people, of course, who are long gone. But a number of our friends go for varying periods of time to warmer places – Florida, Puerto Rico, Arizona, Mexico. Woody and I figure we get enough summer as it is. It isn’t that I love cold weather. Snow is nice to look at but not something I enjoy being outside in much. But I love hunkering down. I never get as much time to write and to read as in the winter. Sometimes we have a wonderful evening with just a fire in the fireplace, the cats lounging around and us listening to music. Also the friends who stay here have more time to socialize, so we either have them over, go to their houses or do something together every weekend. And on the 21st of February, I will start my first seeds inside. The gardening year begins then. We had very high winds Wednesday night. The wind howled and the pines bent over and branches flew through the air, but for once we didn’t lose power. The cats got very excited and ran around instead of coming to bed. The temperature was actually mild and so I had the little tunnel that leads to the sunporch open and they went running in and out, in and out in convoys or singly, continuing onto the next day when the wind was almost as fierce but sunnier. We drove into Boston/Cambridge to buy wine, odd items like spring loaded mesh hampers for laundry. We went to Whole Foods for meat without antibiotics, preferably grass fed, and good cheap olive oil, etc. Also loaded up on catfood at Petsmart. Came back with the truck loaded. Catfood for the next 2-3 months; meat for some time; good crackers, vitamins, supplements, cheese. Four of the five cats were sitting by the door waiting for us to return, greeting us as if we had gone on some lengthy expedition and they were delighted we returned safe from unknown but imagined danger. Puck said, I can smell meat. About time. Stuffed peppers tonight. I froze them from the big summer harvest of sweet peppers [as well as cayenne] that the long hot summer produced. A good many of them actually turned red or golden – doesn’t happen every year. I froze seven bags full. I like to serve them with brown rice, sometimes with kasha. More mss. keep coming for my juried intensive workshop in June. It’s full now but if I like the mss. sometimes I preaccept them for next year. A few people in the class this year were preaccepted last year. I am just finishing reading the mss and judging them for the WOMR contest that Jose Gouveia is organizing.