Abundance and the lack of it
The Outer Cape used to have many jobs but there are fewer and fewer that pay enough for young people to support a reasonable life style, giving the housing problem here. My sweet assistant Melenie who has become a close friend is going to have to leave the Cape and move to central Massachusetts in September. They wanted to buy the house they have been living in and helped rent in the summer, when they move to a studio on the same property. The owner is planning to put it on the market next May. They even managed to get a bank loan, but the price as gone up to well over six hundred thousand. Hopeless for them. Plus Jay, her husband, can’t find a job as a therapist here unless he works with addicts, a job he tried and found depressing and discouraging. I will miss her dreadfully both as an assistant and as a friend. The problem is tht eyar round people, especially young people, are being priced out of the market by affluent people who buy houses at exhorbitant prices and use them maybea month or two out of the year. I am worried about another friend, Dan, whose cancer has returned. He is in great pain and very sick. The chemo stopped working and the new chemo almost killed him. We share our poems with each other and can really talk emotionally and honestly. I feel like many of my real friends are moving away or have cancer or are dying or dead. Willow continues to make herself at home here. After mourning the death of her mentor Puck for weeks, Xena who at three is by far the largest cat, has decided she is top cat. She says she has to take charge because what has she got: a pacifist and kindly uncle, Sugar Ray; a toy boy Mingus; and a kitten, Willow. She prowls around the house at night trying to protect us all. She was a feral kitten who was then found starving after her mother was run over and fostered, but she is very territorial and has all her instincts very prominent and sharp. Since we live in the woods, there are always animals outside who she believes want to get inside. Also in summer with the windows open there are many sounds from summer people and tourists. She almost went nuts on the 4th of July with tourist shooting off fireworks. She kept growling at them. I finished the keynote for the Cape Cod Writers Conference in Hyannis starting the 2nd of August. Woody and I are also teaching a memoir workshop the same day and we’ll have dinner in between with poet Charles Coe, whom we published when we had Leapfrog Press. He’s teaching poetry there the next day.The vegetable gardens are incredible this year. After a late spring and a slow start, we have tons of zucchini and patty pans and enoughyellow squash, many beautiful beets, baskets full of cucumbers. There are little eggplants beginning to develop and sweet peppers and small green tomatoes. The lettuce is just about over. Probably we’ll harvest our hard neck garlic this week. The pumpkins are flowering. I started a second wave of cucumbers this week. They should germinate today or tomorrow. I started Chinese cabbage, fall green cabbage, radicchio, cilantro and bok choi two weeks ago. They are out on the potting bench; today I fed them some liquid seaweed. New Dawn is going crazy over the arbor with her light pink roses. The daylilies are starting. The calla lilies are blooming. Many of the perennials are in bloom, mostly blue and purple right now. Today and yesterday were warm and dry, beautiful, but we know the hot weather and humidity are returning Sunday. Too bad. It’s hard to work in the garden when it’s like that. Melenie and I made black currant jam from our bushes. I had previously made strawberry jam. The beans are reaching the top of their teepees, so soon we should have beans to eat and freeze. We had company last weekend and tonight we go to eat lobster with friends in Harwich Port. I just finished reading Walpert’s The Sunken Cathedral.