Garlic, Jewish Noir, and the Search

We planted our garlic yesterday. It’s a joint effort, less of one than it used to be as I can’t plant in the regular ground [as opposed to raised beds]. I searchout the garlic we want, order it and yesterday morning I separated all the bulbs into individual cloves, those big enough to plant and those that I’ll use in cooking because they’re too small. Then Woodiy did all the actual planting. It took two and a half hours. We plant only hardneck garlic, not the softneck usually sold in supermarkets. Softneck doesn’t grow well in New England. Our winter squash and pumpkins are all in. I potted the rosemarys. Seven of them are sitting on the porch getting used to their pots before I bring them inside. I have begun bringing houseplants inside. I still have to decide if there’s more herbs or attractive annuals I want to try to get through at least part of the winter inside. When we returned from Maine last week, I went back to work on my story The Service and put it through several revisions. This week I sent it to my agent. She liked it but reminded me there are few paying zines that use short stories these days. I am back to writing poetry. I put an ad in the Provincetown Banner for a secretary/assistant this week. Unlike other years, I have only received one call and that was a complete bust. I guess there are far fewer people living here looking for part time work. I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do but I did call the library and the senior center in case they know of anyone who wants to work for me two days a week. Things are piling up now and being my own secretary cuts down on my writing time drastically. I am looking for gigs on the way to St. Louis in midApril and on the way back. So far, no luck with that either. The anthology Jewish Noir from PM Press arrived this week – a nice fat trade paperback. I have a story in it called Trajectories. I started reading other people’s work last night and it seems like a great collection. I’m pleased to be in it. Next year this weekend I should be conducting a workshop for some of the poets who have taken my juried intensive poetry workshop and want a follow-up with me. We’ll see how it goes. It’s an experiment.