The cats were mad when we got back from Chicago and then very needy.  Some evenings, three cats would sit on me at once, subtly trying to push each other off.  I had well over 100 emails although I had been doing them on my phone.  A pile of mail threatened to develop an avalanche.  The garden was out of control.  Everything in the house was a serious mess.  I had to try to get my short story ms. in by May first, which has turned out to be impossible.  I still have four stories to revise and add into the ms.  I feel overwhelmed. I managed only to thin the tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse and plant cosmos I had started months ago – the only garden work I could get away from the computer to carry out. Friday night I had another poetry reading, at the U.U. church in Brewster.  Today, Saturday, a workshop there.  I would like to watch the NFL draft but I can’t take the time to do so.   Woody has been working on the roses, tying up the climbers, pruning off the winterkill, weeding around them.  We don’t grow any hybrid teas and only one floribunda because I won’t poison the water table or give them chemical fertilizers.  I grow a number of old fashioned roses and modern roses that are disease resistant  and undemanding. Next week I’ll ask the 12 participants in my juried intensive June workshop to pony up the last $250 and send me 15 poems to go over in our individual conferences.  With 15 poems plus whatever they write during the workshop, I can generally see their strengths and weaknesses and what they need to move to the next level. Next Saturday is our annual Kentucky Derby Party.  I’m looking forward to it.  It will be smaller than usual this year, 17 of us, but that’s fine since our livingroom is small.  I am still planning what I’ll make.  I had lunch Tuesday with my friend Lois.  It was her birthday so it was my treat, and I had got her an agate necklace. We finished pruning the roses [we have 40-odd bushes] and I’ve been thinning tender seedlings I started that are now in the greenhouse –tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cukes, zukes, yellow squash and pattypans, pumpkins, 4 kinds of basil, marjoram, summer savory, sunflowers, five kinds of marigolds.  I also planted tubers of dahlias and calla lilies in a wooden box to get a head start. I have been putting my book of short stories together.  I have two more to go to edit and then add to the ms. but I haven’t heard from my publisher if he will give me an extension, since I can’t get everything together by Wednesday.  The collection is about 1/3 old revised stories and 2/3s new stories. I gave a reading Friday night to the U.U. church in Brewster, a few towns over.  Then Saturday I gave a poetry workshop there.  I’ve done 10 gigs in the last 6 weeks and I’m exhausted. I just want to stay home, see friends, get back to writing poetry, work in the garden, make my cats happy.  Two more revisions to go and then I’ll try to find out why PM Press hasn’t answered my request.  I hope my agent can find out what’s up – or down. The weather has been gorgeous.  I love spring.  We have hundreds of daffodils and perhaps 4 dozen tulips in bloom.  The small bulbs are done except for the blue anemones and some intense blue scillas.  The flowering quince is opening.  The huge pussy willow we let get out of control is dropping fuzzy pods from its towering height.  Who ever saw a pussy willow thirty feet tall?  the leaves are opening maroon on the two crab apples.  The pear tree is thinking about blooming.  We put the screens on yesterday and the cats are excited.  So am I.