Friends, Many, Eggplants, Many, Tomatoes, Many, Poems, Many

When we got back from Maine, we were behind on our own work and in the garden and the cats were feeling neglected.  We put considerable effort into the garden before it got hot – some canning, some freezing, weeding.  We had three very hot days, so we used those to get a lot of our own work done.I wrote a couple of poems, but mostly, I started serious work on my poetry book.  I divided the poems into sections, six in this book.  Then I went through and winnowed the poems, deciding against about 40 of them.  The next step, the one I’m in the middle of now, is placing them in order in each section and giving the section a name.  I have completed this ordering on half the book, the first three sections.  I hope to get everything in the first order [there will be more cuts, more additions as I go along] before Monday, when I’ll ask Melenie to make a preliminary rough table of contents.I can already see a couple of holes in the book that I need to work on.  So next week, I’ll return to writing poetry and leave the book alone for a couple of weeks.  Of course Labor Day is coming. We have company tonight and company next week.Tuesday night we met friends at Duck Harbor, a bay beach.  With my bad knees, it was difficult for me to climb the small dune and walk in the sand from the parking lot a fair ways through sand and then up and down the other side of the barrier dune.  I made curried chicken salad. We brought potato chips and cherry tomatoes. They had stopped at Moby Dick’s and bought take-out. We watched the sun sink slowly down the multicolored sky and into the bay waters.  As we began to lose light, we went back.  As we stopped the dune, the Green Corn Moon, also called The Sturgeon Moon, was rising above the pines, still somewhat rusty.  I love the rare times you can see the sun and the full moon at the same time.  this was the second time we saw these friends, as we had them over the night after we got back from Maine.  I made eggplant parmesan, Marcella Hazan’s version.  My favorite. Used up all the eggplants in the refrigerator then.  We already have more.  We have been friends since Students for a Democratic Society and the anti-war movement.  I saw another old friend on Saturday, also friends ever since the same era.  I’ve known Kathy  since she was 19.Woody spent all day Thursday working on the WOMR float for Carnival in Provincetown.  Then he walked in front of the float to clear the way.  People surge in between floats and have to be backed off so they don’t get hurt. He brought back blue, gold, red, pink, blue necklaces of beads of course. I thought the cats would like them, but they are indifferent.  However, Puck liked it when Stephen put a purple necklace on him. I took it off when they left, so he wouldn’t get caught on anything.  He was annoyed I removed it.The three dahlias I planted in spring are madly blooming.  We picked roses and phlox for the table, also dahlias nearby.  I’m made a new kind of leg of lamb for Dale and Stephen with little potatoes, orange slices, tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs.  It turns out splendidly, very tender and tasty.  I treat dahlias an annuals because I never seem to be able to carry the bulbs through the winter, lacking a basement in which to store them.Today, Saturday, we’re in the middle of canning our last batch of tomato sauce for this year.  I baked a pumpkin this morning that had some insect damage and now I’m about to puree it.  Then into the freezer to make a pie in the fall.