Lovely rain, lovely temperatures

I know there are people who are depressed by fall. They see it as things dying and they don’t ever want summer to end. I’m the opposite. I get bored to the teeth with summer, especially this hot dry one with neverending sun and heat, with plants and trees dying and with my airconditioning broken for a month. I lost most of my perennials and the annuals I’d started. We have only our well water and do not under any circumstances want our well to run dry if we can avoid it. So we watered the vegetables, the plants along the stairway by the house and on the kitchen terrace and that was about it. Most of my rose bushes died. I couldn’t do anything about it.My brain and my body wake up in cooler weather. I’ve written poems and revised older poems this week, finished up preparations for the Columbus weekend workshop – hoping that the possible hurricane doesn’t hit us. Is it Mathew? Currently turned into a category 3 in the Caribbean. Next I have to think about what I’ll be doing in Binghamton the first week of November and right after the workshop start reading the collected poems of Adrienne Rich for a critical study I’ve promised Tikkun magazine.I dried the last tomatoes we need and Woody has begun pulling the tomato plants and putting away the stakes and cages. The fall lettuce is up and what cole crops survived the torrid dry weather are getting ready to use – the bok choi and the Chinese cabbage made it. We’ll have our first salad of the fall tomorrow evening.I have been preparing for Rosh haShonah that kicks off the Days of Awe. Working with my new assistant Penny, we’ve been beginning to attack the mountain of tasks that have accumulated since I last had an assistant. She is learning the job as we struggle along.Schwartzie went to the vet yesterday along with his favorite, Mingus, for shots. He was very good and the vet pronounced him healthy and a fine kitten indeed. The vet asked me how we chose him. I said, he chose us. That’s the best way to find a kitten or a cat. He is very affectionate with both Woody and me and with Mingus and Willow. He plays hard with both of them. He is still afraid of Xena. She decided to wash him one day this week and he cowered, pretending to be a rug, praying that T-Rex wouldn’t eat him. He is curious about everything, into everything, very companionable. Like Xena or perhaps even more so, he wants to be with us. Xena got upset this morning because we were outside working. I wanted to plant some more dill and bok choi and pull the old lemon basil, do a bit of weeding. Woody planted the three new irises I got from Fedco. Having been a street cat, Xena is wary of the outside, never wants to go out or tries to bolt. She cries when she can see us outside, which she considers a very dangerous place.She’s right. The coywolves have returned after a blessed three years without them around us. We see the alpha male in the late afternoon and hear them at night. This morning, a beautiful red-tailed hawk was circling overhead hunting. I saw a couple of Monarch butterflies flittering about. Also some snails I picked off. Why do I prefer snails to slugs when they both do about the same amount of damage? Sometimes I kill snails but most often, I dump them in the woods. I kill slugs. it’s aesthetics. I find slugs disgusting, hate to touch them. I find snails pretty. It’s not fair, I know.