Not winter yet but soon

We had a couple of mild days this week that helped us try to catch up on outside work. We are still eating from the garden, but this coming week is supposed to have regular wintry cold weather, so that is probably coming to an end. Woody has started putting the gardens to sleep, but we’re way behind. We haven’t even taken the screens down yet. All week we have been eating leftover turkey. Until the last day, it wasn’t a drag as I know many recipes that make the turkey very different and delicious. But enough! We do have a tree although we don’t celebrate Christmas per se. I never had a tree once I left home and just ignored the holiday except for a chanikiyah at Chanukah, but when my mother was dying, she gave me her remaining ornaments. We flew home in an almost empty plane on Christmas bringing the ornaments along with her ashes. We chopped down a small pitch pine on our land and decorated it in her honor. I have a poem about her love of Christmas trees and colored lights – The rabbi’s granddaughter and the Christmas tree. it wasn’t Christian to her, just bright and shiny. She loved decorations and lights. I think of the tree as an annual memorial to her. The tree is just sitting there naked in the livingroom while the cats get used to it. Today we’ll put lights on. We always have a wild tree. Most of the ornaments we’ve acquired over the years are animal or vegetable: many birds and cats along with everything from a red glass snail to a prickly porcupine and two outrageous peacocks that go on top of the tree. You name the animal and we may have it, although we lack an aardvark and an echidna. Tonight friends are coming over for supper. I’m already organizing for our annual solstice party that will be in two weeks from yesterday. I’m expecting 30-35 people. it takes a lot of planning. Melenie is coming from Hadley to help me cook. We enjoy cooking together. I trust this will go more smoothly than brining the turkey did. Manuscripts are coming in for my juried intensive poetry workshop that will be held here next June. I have to get on it and reserve the conference room for the class and the big room at the library for the reading. I should have done it already, but I’ve been overloaded this fall and still am. I try to read 50 pp of Adrienne Rich’s collected poems every day except Monday and Sunday. I’m up to p. 900 as of yesterday. Monday I’d better get on the room reservations. My new assistant Penny is a great help. We are slowly catching up on everything that went by the wayside during the period I lacked an assistant. She is very organized, a blessing.