My new poetry collection from Knopf MADE IN DETROIT was officially out on my birthday, March 31^st. I have done four interviews so far with two more scheduled for next week. Thursday evening I read at Pres Hall, capping the celebration of the Joe Gouveia poetry contest. there’s both a national and a Cape Cod contest and I judge both. Every winner starting with the winner of first prize, Wilderness Sarachild, and going down to the last honorable mention, each read their winning poem. Then I brought up the rear reading from MADE IN DETROIT, five poems. The room was crowded and the audience was great. I think everybody enjoyed themselves. I made the charoset on Thursday and boiled 13 eggs and then roasted one of them for the seder plate. I made a Sephardic charoset with almonds, figs, apples, etc instead of the Ashkenazi version with walnuts – I can’t digest true nuts like walnuts. They make me extremely ill. It isn’t an allergy. Since I had paratyphoid many years ago that I caught in a little village in the mountains of Crete, I have been unable to digest walnuts. After hard cooking the eggs, I roasted one of them for the seder plate. Friday I got the ritual items together for the seder plate, woody stapled the haggadahs and I put the and the music and an additional blessing for Shabbat in a box along with candles, candleholders, the afikomen cloth, a Kiddush cap and the seder plate and little platelets. We had 23 participants at the seder, one from New York, two from Chicago, three from Boston, two from Chicago, one from London and the rest from Wellfleet. A lively crowd. I cooked gedempte flaisch mit abricoton, a Sephardic egg-fennel-cucumber dish, and Woody made his terrific light matzah balls in chicken soup. I had to hardcook 4 more eggs to make enough salad for everyone. It’s always a popular dish, dressed with a lemon-olive oil-dill dressing. It has been a rather frantic week. Now we’re being taken out tonight to celebrate both our birthdays by Dale and Stephen. They’re taking us to the Brazilian Grill in Hyannis, a restaurant all of us really like. Then I hope to get into the garden and plant the first of the raised beds Woody created for my garden. The uppermost garden, the Rosa, will be mine with all raised beds. Because of my knee replacements, I can’t kneel. I’ll plant 6 kinds of lettuce in the newly created bed. if there’s any extra room, I’ll put in radishes. Some summer bulbs I ordered came today – dahlias, calla lilies, acidanthera – and I’ll start the dahlisa and calla lilies in potting soil in the greenhouse. The cucumbers I started have popped and are out there already. We had to take some of the peppers I started three and a half weeks ago out to the greenhouse because they got big enough to poke their heads out of the lattice over the pots. They were in the bay window in plastic tubs for kitty litter. We have a bunch of those we use for seedlings. The peppers had to escape to the greenhouse because Xena likes to eat them. Woody had brought me a big bunch of flowers for my birthday, including sunflowers. I’m fond of sunflowers but unfortunately Xena finds them tasty and has been chewing on them. I start cat grass for her that she nibbles on but thinks they don’t compare to sunflowers. I’ve been opening the little tunnel in the bedroom that leads to the sunporch this week since it’s been quite mild. The cats love to go through that. Sometimes Mingus will just go out and come in and go out and come in in rapid succession just for the fun of it. About 90% of the snow is gone. Mostly it’s left where there’s deep shade or where it got piled up when Woody was shoveing. The vegetable gardens are entireliy clear, even the one at the foot of our hill that gets pumpkins, winter squash and pole beans. Spring is here at last, at long last.