It’s the peak of the summer harvest season here and we are just finishing processing our tomatoes. We have canned simple, Italian and hot sauce—the last yesterday with our own cayennes. I also froze basil tomato sauce. So far we’ve frozen 19 lbs of beans and I hope to do some more today. I finished off black currant vinegars and also cilantro-ginger-garlic and tarragon vinegars. I’ve frozen pesto basilica, garlic scape pesto and cilantro pesto. I tried making parsley pesto but we didn’t like it. The peppers are not doing great so I’ve only been able to freeze 1 bag of them so far. We have been just enough eggplants so far to eat as we go along. Red cabbages we have in plenty. That’s the way it is. This has been the first week since I got off oxycodone after my last knee operation that I haven’t written at least something. I don’t count blogs as real writing. I just treat it as a kind of diary and write without revising. This week, no poems, no stories. no essays. I’m preparing for my stint to Bluffton University when I give the convocation and then meet with various students groups. Then onto Rochester for a poetry reading and a two hour memoir workshop. I’ve been putting together the materials I need for each of those gigs. Woody is still suffering from his hamstring injury. The worst part of it is that the pain keeps him awake at night. He has been to two chiropractors, one GP, one sports medicine doctor – and nothing has helped. It’s frightening. This should be a quiet weekend of hard work in the house and garden. During the day, so long as he doesn’t overdo, Woody’s generally fine. His legs begin to bother him in the evening and night is hell. I hear him rambling about or running a hot bath in the middle of the night, so I haven’t been sleeping much either. Xena feels under siege. At night there’s so much animal activity – raccoons, deer, coywolves, fisher cats, the cats and dogs summer people put out to feed the coywolves and fisher cats [which aren’t cats but in the weasel family and fierce predators], flying squirrels, possums, whatever can run around in the night foraging. Xena feels that with Puck gone, she has the duty to protect us and she takes that very seriously. She prowls most of the night instead of sleeping with me as she used to. She continues to spend a lot of her day when she is not making warning noises at squirrels and chipmunks and stray cats playing with Willow. Sometimes Xena is a 15 pound kitten. I have to continue drying herbs also. I love herbs. They demand little and give up so much. When I made tabouli yesterday I use not only parsley but mint, lavage, sweet marjoram and tarragon. Also little bits of red onion and pattypans. Olive and toasted sesame oils. In Rochester I’ll see one of the participants in a former of my juried intensive poetry workshops, Celeste Schantz, a fine poet. She set up the venues there and I’ll see her at supper. I’m looking forward to that. I keep up with some of my poets on a fairly regular basis. Some of them keep asking for a follow up workshop. I intend to think about that seriously while I’m on this coming week’s trip.