Summer winding down...at last

Finally the tomatoes are slowing down although we still have three large platters full on the diningroom table. But at last we can eat there instead of crowding onto the library table with our dishes and serving bowls because tomatoes were completely covering the diningroom table. The tyranny of too many tomatoes is ending. The dehydrator is about to go into winter storage. We are still getting zucchini and pattypans although the crookneck yellow squash have gone the way of all good things. I actually would prefer the zukes and pattypans would die gracefully as I am looking forward to the fall vegetables. We have fall lettuce, endive, escarole, Brussels sprouts, kale, hot and sweet peppers, Chinese cabbage and Swiss chard waiting to be eaten, but we are stuck still consuming summer stuff. Last night I made a shrimp dish with cooked down fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic and frying peppers, served with pasta with pesto – we still have lots of basil and I froze a couple of containers of pesto yesterday – and what are probably the last of the pole beans. We had a very good pumpkin harvest, both the small sugars and the big rouge vif d’estampes. Some have a little damage and Xena our youngest and biggest cat has been taking bites out of some of them. I never had a cat attack pumpkins before. Not even gourmet Puck has shown an interest in them as food. So all the pumpkins with any damage I cooked in the oven yesterday, Woody pulled the flesh off the skin after the slices cooled. This morning I’ll puree it for pies and other desserts. I don’t only make desserts with pumpkins. I make some wonderful side and main dishes with them. Julia Child has some wonderful pumpkin recipes. The French know what to do with them beyond desserts. I especially love making whole pumpkin stuffed with flavored breadcrumbs, gruyere and light cream. Today is Melenie and Jay’s wedding in Provincetown. I’m early on the program with two poems they picked out – Why marry at all and Colors passing through us. Then there’s a big reception. I hope to manage it all. This has been a week of solving problems—harvest problems, house problems and literary problems. One zine that accepted poems lost my bio. Another lost the entire submission. I have been working through my copyedited ms. I hope to finish it Monday. I have replaced one haibun with a better one. I have to look at one section that might have a weak poem in it. Melenie won’t be in Monday but she is coming in Wednesday for the last time this month [off to Paris for their honeymoon] and I hope to get the ms changes Xeroxed then and the ms. off to Knopf. We are still debating the cover. Next Tuesday at 9 am or thereabouts, usually very much thereabouts, someone is supposed to come to look at our diningroom floor. It’s covered with forty year old slate that looks grimy, has loose stone, oozes water in damp weather and is depressing. We want to know if they can put down vinyl. Then at 1:30 or thereabouts, generally very very thereabouts, a new dishwasher is coming and they’ll pull out the old one that is dying and doing a very bad job cleaning the dishes. It also makes frightening grinding noises. We have a full agenda this fall of home improvements. Let’s see how many of our plans we actually can carry out.