Get us in the ground, now!

It’s that time in spring when all the plants I started in March are knocking their heads against the ceiling of the greenhouse and demanding to be planted at once. Since we got back from NYC, we’ve panted all our paste, maincrop and cherry tomatoes.   We’ve planted our cucumbers and our zucchini plants, our sweet peppers. Today I planted pum;pkinds – the NE Pie and the larger rouge vief d’Estampes Cincerella pumpkins. Then in the next raised bed, I’ll plant a couple of butternut squashes, from seed. If Woody gets to plow the 3^rd raised bed down below, I’ll plant from seeds the other types of winter squash. I started zinnias I’d like to get into the new raised flower bed near the front door, in the kitchen garden there. Woody plans to transplant pattypans and yellow squash into the main garden. The sunflowers are falling over, they’re so tall, and must go into the ground – tht’s a lot of work as there are many aggressive weeds that have sprung up tenaciously where the sunflowers usually go. I also need to pant some yellow pansies with faces that Martha gave me. I have read and annotated the first three mss. of the poets coming to the June workshop. This week I plan to read and annotate three more. Penny, my assistant, and I went over all the handouts and the lecture and examples for the first day, imagery.   Before Monday, I hope to edit the second day, oral effects, so we can get that day together Monday or Wednesday. Monday, I have to do a phone interview with a journalist from London where two of my science fiction books, WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME and HE SHE AND IT are being republished. The white lilacs and the purple are in bloom, along with the sour cherry, the 2 pear trees and about sixty wood scillas in blue. Both crabapples are in bloom and their red leaves are just as pretty as the flowers. Everything has leafed out or has begun doing so. The weeping beech is fully out and so are the sugar maples and the birches. The white oaks are not far behind. I feel drunk on the green sometimes, the way it fills my eyes after so long in winter chiaroscuro. Thursday was a particularly difficult day. I worked on a ms. all morning until around 1:30. Then I planted cucumbers and the last of the paste tomatoes. I then planted many summer savory seedlings and many sweet marjoram seedlings in the herb bed. Before that, I went over all the sweet pepper seedlings and thinned them a last time. Woody can’t bear to throw away the runt seedlings or what has to be sacrificed because they are too close to others and we can only save the other. I’m harder hearted about seedlings I started. Unfortunately for me the timing was bad when a friend from Caifornia who has a house in the next town was leaving the next day, so had to be seen that evening. I made a good dinner of an Italian braised lamb dish, but I was so exhausted, I felt like crying. By the time I got to bed, I was in a lot of pain and so over the edge, I could not sleep. that didn’t help my state the next day. It was all just too much. But Now I’m recovered after a comparatively easy day and ready to get at those pumpkins and put them into their bed.