I am trying to new vet in an attempt to find out what’s wrong with my Abby Puck. He has always been a strong healthy cat but now he’s skin and bones. He’s anemic. the new vet has him on an antibiotic. I feed him babyfood and whatever I can get him to eat. I know that sometimes when a cat is failing, the other cats pick him or ignore him. But the Burmese Sugar Ray and his cousin Mingus are sleeping with him. My huge rescue tabby Xena licks him and is acting maternal. They are all being good to him. They seem to recognize that he’s weak and needs their kindness. Thursday night Xena and Mingus caught a mouse. We had not had one come into the house for awhile. I’d think they could smell the cats, but they come anyhow. About 95% of the garden is in except for the herbs I ordered from Wellsweep Herb farm in New Jersey, as I do every year. Yesterday I planted nasturtiums. After an early light supper we went out to play poker at Lois and Ramon’s. Both Woody and I were losers but it was a fun evening. Today we are celebrating Dale’s birthday. I wrapped his present yesterday. I’m making Stephen and Dale a birthday supper tonight: rib roast, scalloped potatoes [Julia Child recipe], salad from our garden. Haven’t figured out the hors d’oeuvres yet as I write this. I’m about to make a strawberry rhubarb pie. The strawberries are the organic local ones I try to freeze in fairly large quantities every June. The rhubarb is from our garden. I’ve been reading poetry mss. from the poets who’ll be in my juried intensive poetry workshop. I try to read 3 a week. So far I’ve read eight. Working on the ninth today. in one case, the poet submitted what are likely the best five poems she had ever written. I ask for 15 for the workshop. I was sorely disappointed as a number of the poems were doggerel and some just felt like empty exercises. But most of the poets have really promising work. I feel I can help them move to a stronger, higher level with their poems. We have some rain this week but we are in a drought. We had enough snow [that way, way way more than enough to endure] this winter, so the ponds and streams have plenty of water. But we have to water from our well every other day to keep the gardens growing. Woody is putting in the irrigation system in the upper garden that is all raised beds and thus all mine. There aren’t any raised beds yet in the main garden, but there are two in the lower garden that I planted with pumpkins and winter squash. I love the raised beds Woody builds for me. I still can’t kneel on my replaced knees. Raised beds are easy for me to plant and weed and harvest. Good news for human rights from Ireland, but when will they make abortion legal? And when we our old white men keep making it hard for women to access and dreaming about crippling women’s ability to choose and sending us back to the days of back alley abortions that killed on of my friends when she was 24. And forced me to do it myself at 18 and almost bleed to death. Choice one of the most fundamental human rights, control over your own body.