A bit lost

Monday when I was able to get hold of Jeff, my agent’s assistant, I learned that Lois Wallace had died Friday, not long after I got the news she was unconscious in hospice.  Jeff is essentially the bookkeeper, so I have no idea what to do business wise with permissions, requests, copyrights, placing my new novel, all those things by which I make what living I can.  And I am also grief-stricken.  I know she was aware of how much I cared about her.  But I never got to say goodbye, so it feels truncated, incomplete.It has been mild all week and we continue the hardy planting.  Beets, parsnips, kale, Brussels sprouts, dill, Italian and curly parsley, chervil.  I started the dahlia I dug up last year and 3 new ones in potting soil in the greenhouse – so they will bloom sooner.  Calla lilies do very well here and multiply so I probably shouldn’t have bought three more.  I planted them all in two long containers – and they will, unlike the dahlias that will go into a flower bed, remain in their containers all summer.  They show off better that way. The dahlias are masterfully tall but the calla lilies are rather short so it’s easier to enjoy them in containers. A friend of mine who often provides housing to the participants in my juried intensive workshop every June has a dahlia garden with perhaps 40 of them blooming through August into September. We pass her garden on the way to and from town center or Route 6 and we always slow down when they are in bloom to enjoy them.Ira’s birthday was Wednesday, but we’re celebrating it on Saturday.Wednesday he got up @ 5 a.m. to go to Provincetown to pitch with a DJ on WOMR, the community radio station where he has a weekly interview program and also does an opinion piece, frequently humorous, on Fridays during the news.  This year he’s chairman of the board.  I was working with Melenie and he has meditation that evening, so we had an early supper.  When he got home after nine, I gave him one small present.Yesterday it was so warm that we put the screens on all the windows so we can begin to open them without the cats getting out to be eaten like my poor gorgeous Max by the coywolves.  The house really heated up.  We’re all caught up moving the hardy plants I started from seed out of the greenhouse and direct planting all the hardy veggies. Today I’m going to uncover all the roses.  I don’t grow any hybrid teas and only one floribunda.  All the others are antique roses, Radler’s roses and other climbing and bush roses that can survive without poison or chemical fertilizer.  We lose some but I won’t keep them alive artificially.  If they can’t make it with water, compost and manure, they don’t belong here.  I have several David Austin roses that suffer some but usually bounce back. I love their fragrance.  We have about 35 rose bushes and climbing roses. We have so many daylilies I couldn’t even guess how many.  I love daylilies because they have so few enemies, multiple, bloom copiously and if we get bored, we can eat them.  I like daylily blossoms in salads in the summer – like slightly sweet lettuce.  We also eat our nasturtiums.  And soon, we’ll be eating our violets and their leaves in spring salads. I decorate with pansies, also edible. This week I planted loads of them, the old fashioned ones with faces in the dark colors I prefer. I cook with my roses sometimes and make rose syrup, great on pancakes and waffles. I have a lot of rose recipes I collected when I was writing the rose book that was such a disaster.  A story for another time.We’re still clearing the perennial beds – probably have about two thirds done now.Winter lasted so long that we are spending a great deal of time gardening, to catch up with all the tasks we normally do in March.  Still haven’t pruned the wisteria that has ambitions to take over the land and then the town and finally the world.