Dispatches from Tomato Heaven...

...or hell, depending on how I’m feeling at the time, rich in produce or oppressed by the huge harvest. We have canned 15 simple tomato sauces, which is enough. Today we should can about 7 Italian tomato sauces. I also froze 4 lbs of beans and will do more today and made 5 containers of pesto. So it goes this time of year. I gave a poetry reading at the Wellfleet library Thursday night to a good sized crowd who bought many books. I read only from MADE IN DETROIT, my newest poetry book that came out at the end of March this year, and a few new poems. It went well and I enjoyed myself. Friday night we had old friends Eleanor and Jeff over. I’ve known Jeff since 1967 and Eleanor since 1971. Eleanor is allergic to cats, so we ate in the gazebo. That’s a bit hard on both Woody and my backs as the old wooden chairs are not comfortable. But it’s great to see them every August. Woody is doing a program with Eleanor and Helen Kennedy on Tuesday. She comes here from London every August.I spent most of the day making salad nicoise – willing to do that once a year [like cassoulet and eggplant parmesan] although last year after my 2^nd knee operation I couldn’t. We have enough left over for a light supper tonight if I open another can of olive oil packed tuna. We finally had a real honest to goodness rain storm this week with about two and a half inches of rain; the last time we had appreciable rain was early July. Now it’s hot and dry again but at the same time, humid. Hot and humidity together drain me. I don’t think Willow had ever seen real rain [there were no windows where she was born and spent her first 11 weeks] so she didn’t know what to make of it. We are not doing well with peppers or eggplants this year, although I had enough to make baba genoush as an appetizer last night. I make an excellent smoky baba genoush with enough garlic to have a bite. I continue with my 50 ways to cook zucchini. We endow many friends with our surplus. We planted too many this spring because, it being cold and wet, plants grew very slowly for their first couple of weeks. Woody got worried and insisted we plant more hills. We did. So we’re swamped. Same with beans. This Sunday I am reading political poems at an anti-Pilgrim nuclear power plant and anti-nuke rally with Harvey Wasserman speaking here in Wellfleet. Woody went to an Arlo Guthrie concert Thursday night – he gets to go to a number of concerts free because he sits at the WOMR table. I enjoyed Arlo Guthrie 30 years ago and didn’t feel nostalgic, so I didn’t go. Besides, I’m reading book-long short story manuscripts for a contest. I need to get through them all by Monday. Therefore since we were having company Friday night, I wasn’t about to go out anyhow. I wrote a couple of poems this week but it was hard to find that much time for my own work. August is always that way. Much company and much garden and kitchen work.