Frost comes to Wellfleet

We finally got our first frost of the year along with a windstorm that ripped off many leaves. The big sugar maple is completely bare its upper two thirds but still golden and orange and scarlet in its bottom third.  The salad greens in the main garden are under white agricultural cloth to prolong their season.  We are still harvesting Brussels sprouts, leeks and kale as well as salads.  The last roses are in vases along with the last chrysanthemums.I finished potting the herbs I bring in and the houseplants to overwinter inside before the frost.  We have decided to decommission as they say about nuclear power plants one of our four vegetable gardens.  Woody has been working to do that, as it is surrounded by high fences.  When the cats could go outside, they used to love to climb that fence and run along the two by fours on top.  That put them on a level with our faces, which cats love.Melenie, my assistant,  returned from Florida today where she had a scholarship to a writing retreat the last three weeks and almost fainted when she saw the pile of filing.  We have lots of work to make up.  I’m late getting to this weekly blog because I have been being my own secretary and because I was still working on my new poetry ms., still putting in and taking out.  I think I’m nearly done.  Thinking about titles.  Considering MADE IN DETROIT  or LOOKING BACK IN UTTER CONFUSION.Puck, the abbysinian has a crush on Melenie and looked for her constantly while she was away.  Today when she came in, he turned his back on her and would not respond. That lasted for about an hour. Then he came to her and has been purring every since, walking around the house purring with delight.We like our new kitchen floor. Everyone admires it as it does what I picked it out to do  -- warm up and lighten a dark room.  It even makes it look bigger.  We have a small kitchen that we use heavily and constantly.  I sometimes think there is an inverse proportion between the fanciness of kitchens and their huge size and the amount of actual cooking that goes on in them.We sat up very late Wednesday night to watch the Red Sox clinch the World Series. I am not a baseball fan – it’s too slow for me.  I had more fun watching the Patriots finally show some muscle on offense.  But Woody had been taken to one of the playoff games at Fenway by friends, so he had gotten involved.  The cats thought it was great that we sat up till midnight.We had company Saturday night. I made a bunch of hors d’oeuvres, that these friends like to have before supper [I prefer soup myself] and then a slow roasted lamb with carrots, onions, tomatoes, garlic, herbs, wine and cannellini beans.  I served it with rice pilaf.  For dessert I made an apple pear pie with ginger.  I make good pies.  My pastry is delicious.  The evening was great fun until we got in an argument about Obamacare. Woody finally got into an insurance program on line but it took him three weeks.  It was mostly the insurance company in his case that caused the delays.  They refused to accept him as having a residence.  We had to jump through endless hoops, keep sending documentation, more emails, more phonecalls, more notarized documents.  I HATE INSURANCE COMPANIES!  I have been fighting Blue Cross Blue Shield since last June to pay a doctor’s bill. I kept at it and finally this week, they did at last.