Scapes and snakes and back to sort of normal

After the workshop ended, I semi-collapsed. Really worn out. I also had a sore throat from talking constantly from dawn tonight all week. The cats were mad at me and everything in the house was a mess. Mostly it still is. I had to get back into the gardens right away, starting Sunday. I had strawberries, rhubarb and brocolli to freeze, and I did it. Woody cut the scapes [also called snakes] off our hardneck garlic. I have invented a pesto using them. I made some to use at once and froze some. Here’s the recipe: Cut the scapes off hardneck garlic. After the bulge, discard the skinny end. Cut into pieces the lower half about 2 inches to an inch and a half long. Add fresh cilantro leaves, about an equal amount. Add some parsley and a small amount of lovage if you grow it. Make it in the usual way with pesto: grind parmesan cheese, add pine nuts, the scapes and herbs, olive oil and mix well. It freezes perfectly. Great on fish, pasta, whatever you like.  We are beginning to get zucchini and some yellow squash and pattypans, some cucumbers. The broccoli did not do well this year and is tapering off. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone this week except one friend as last was so crammed with people. I have made up with the cats. We are beginning to understand that Mingus is taking the loss of Sugar Ray particularly hard. From the moment he was carried into the house and Sugar Ray ran up to him and kissed him, they were inseparable in spite of the difference in ages and temperament. When Sugar Ray could not longer clean himself, Mingus washed him every day. Now Mingus needs a lot of attention and howls incessantly at times. Woody gets upset with him. We have taken to bringing him out to the gazebo [it’s screened in]. He likes that a lot. We are trying to bring him through this period of mourning and missing. I’ve spent most of my indoor time this week putting together the workshop for my returning poets – 11 people [of those interested I put their names in a hat and drew out 12 originally; one couldn’t make it and by then I realized I could not handle 12] who had taken my juried June intensive workshop in previous years. Some of the poets had been asking me for years to do a follow-up. I have been working with the returning poets to figure out what to do over the Columbus Day weekend. A three-day workshop necessarily cannot cover or include everything they desired. We’ve cut out the party, added a public reading at the library Sunday evening. It has been a complicated and time consuming process, but I did manage to write one poem and revise two others and then send a bunch off to the Patterson Review, a venue I’m fond of. We went into Boston/Cambridge on Wednesday to get things we need, most likely our last trip into the city until September. I had lunch on Thursday with my friend Gigi, who lives in Brewster. She picked me up and we went to the food trucks. This is something new for Wellfleet. A restaurant that has been more times than I can count under various unsuccessful owners since I’ve lived here has been taken over as a place for food trucks. There are four of them now. We were both most curious about the Chinese, so that’s what we both got and shared. We took everything back to the gazebo, where the Paul’s Himalayan Musk Rose is now in bloom climbing up one side and over the roof and just beginning to come down the other side. We took Mingus out with us. He is a cat who never begs and never wants human food. He was just happy to be with us [he likes women especially] and in the gazebo.