Trying to get to Salem
The weather turned warm, dry and pleasant after a good soaking, so we could get to planting. We replaced trees that had died after fall planting and a terrible extreme winter. I began planting a few perennials along our new stairs beside the house. We put in one more rhubarb to go with our 5 that survived. Then we planted the sungold climbing cherry tomatoes I started inside. I also took summer savory and sweet marjoram from the greenhouse and put them in the herb garden after about 45 minutes of weeding. Whatever this winter did, it sure didn’t discourage weeds. We are separating our paste tomatoes this year into three rows at a distance from each other in the rosa garden. [Rosa Luxembourg, nothing to do with our actual rose garden, a play on the Luxembourg gardens in Paris] We put in a double row yesterday. We plant many pasta tomatoes as we can 3 kinds and also the tomatoes themselves and freeze one kind. Either we’ll do another now if Woody gets back from shopping early enough today before he has to go off to Provincetown, or else he will replace the windows on the sunporch with screens. That will make the cats very, very happy as the sunporch sticks into the woods and is exciting for them. Spring has made them rambunctious, turning all but very elderly Efi into kittens. Woody is shopping in Orleans this morning then after an hour or two at home, goes off to Ptown for a WOMR meeing – the board of the community radio station of which he is the president. We had friends over Friday evening for a meal of gravlax [we make it ourselves every six weeks or so], berber lamb, roast little potatoes & carrots and beans sauteed with onions & mushrooms and a strawberry mousse that did not gel so it was dessert soup. [Every summer I freeze about 20 lbs of our pole beans]. Then in the morning we got ready to go to Salem MA where I was to give a reading as part of the MASS Poetry Festival that goes on all weekend. We usually give a Kentucky Derby Party yesterday for a whole bunch of rowdy friends, but I had accepted the festival gig so this year we’ll give a Belmont party instead. We left @ 10 am, allowing 4 hours to get there in time to check in before a 2:15 reading. I wanted to get there at least 45 minutes early. Since the reading was at the Essex Peabody Museum and I have always wanted to go there, I wanted some time to enjoy the museum before the reading. I packed yogurt and fruit so we could eat while traveling and would not have to stop for lunch. At 10:50 we came to an abrupt halt. Thus began an hour and 45 minutes of parking and easing forward, parking and easing forward at perhaps 5 miles an hour at the fastest, while enjoying an unrivaled view of the rear end of a Toyota Tundra – it was blue. Very blue. Seven and a half miles of sitting, fidgeting, looking at my watch, both of us getting stomach aches from agita. The Army Corps of Engineers in their infinite wisdom – best exemplified by the wonderful levees they built to protect New Orleans from hurricanes like Katrina – had decided to close two lanes on the Sagamore Bridge. Normally they send out a warning when they are playing with the bridges. This time, no. So we were caught by surprise. If we had known, we have an alternate route we use but it was way too late. At 12:45 we finally got over the bridge. Now if we had a straight shot through Boston, we might have made it just on time. But the hockey playoffs had a crucial game that afternoon and the Southeast Expressway was jammed all the way from Route 128 to the hockey game downtown. I added up the time. Even with perfect no-traffic –most unlikely on a sunny beautiful Saturday afternoon – we could not make it. We drove to the next exit, I called the festival coordinator and we turned around. Back into bridge traffic but lighter in that direction. Finally somewhat after 2 pm we arrived home, depressed and hungry. Neither of us felt like eating in the car so we ate our yogurt at home. This is only the 3rd time in decades and decades of performing readings I have missed one. Once I had the flu; once my father died two days before I was to read in San Francisco. Now the Army Corps of Engineers did me in.