I have a few daffodils in bloom, many Siberian scilla – the brightest blue – and a few late deep purple crocuses.  But the main sign of spring for us is that we finally were able to get into the garden.  I took broccoli, red cabbage, cilantro, leaf lettuce and bok choi plants out of the greenhouse and into the main garden.  Then we planted seeds of spinach [a lot!], arugula, cress, red & white radishes, purple orach, red Chinese mustard, leeks, 5 more kinds of lettuce.We have also uncovered about a third of a perennial beds and weeded them, begun on the herbs and unmulched the rhubarb & the 3 tree peonies.  Everything looks different now. I was in a happy mood after the conference and the planting, catching up on correspondence, bills, requests, working on my haggadah.  Every year I add a poem, take out something prosy or irrelevant.Thursday about 11 a.m. the phone rang.  I had been trying to reach Marilyn Silver, who has been a student of mine for more than a decade. She is the only poet I have allowed to take my workshop multiple times.  She is a paraplegic and a serious poet.  When she first came to me, she was writing impersonal poems of observation in which she never appeared.  I began to urge her to write about her disability and the things that happened to her because of it.  Gradually she began to write moving and powerful poems about her condition. I felt that work was very important, as how many poems have you ever read by a paraplegic about being a paraplegic.Anyhow, she had not been in communication for a while and I had left messages on FB last week and written a letter.  No reply.  So I called her Wednesday, got the answering machine and left a message.  Thursday morning her aide called me.  Marilyn had a heart attack, went into coma and was not expected to wake again or survive.  I will really miss her and wonder if she ever appointed a literary executor.I posted the message on my private FB group for members of this year’s juried intensive poetry workshop in June.  Half of them chimed in an once to please fill the spot as everything is set up for 12.  I delayed for further information on Marilyn’s condition but yesterday, I filled it from the waiting list.Anyhow 4 pm Thursday, phone rings again. This time it is Jeff, my agent’s assistant. I went through 3 literary agents early on but acquired Lois Wallace in 1974 and have been with her since.  We became friends many years ago.  She has had lung cancer [she smoked like an old fashioned steam locomotive] but it had gone into remission for over a year.  They found a spot and she went into radiation, which caused a perforated ulcer.  They operated unsuccessfully and she went into a coma and has not come out of it. Thursday they gave her 2 or 3 days to live. She is/was unconscious in hospice in Manhattan.  I don’t even know if she is alive because I was so shocked and upset I forgot to ask where she is in hospice.  I can’t reach Jeff until Monday at the office.  I’ll call him then.I went into a deep depression. I feel as if my friends are dying around me fast and faster.  Another friend, Barbara Gray, who was responsible when she was in the Massachusetts house, for most of the legislation that helps women, died while I was off at the conference. After retirement,  she had moved to Wellfleet, where she was very active on local issues.  We traded meals back and forth and when Ira was a selectman, she supported him and his issues.  She was a bright and social women who loved to discuss politics.   Like us, she was a party-giver.Last night, I made dinner for Stephen and Dale and Martha.  Stephen and I have birthdays 3 days apart,  so we almost always celebrate our birthdays together – but on his birthday I was off at the Conference in Boston. We had a good time together and I felt better. This morning I am a bit down again, but I’m pulling myself together.