After working on three new short stories that took up most of July, I had the urge this week to get back to poetry and worked on four new poems. It has been hot and humid but no rain, worst of both worlds. We’re having to water daily on various gardens.The pansies on the porch look sad so I think it’s time to pull them. I have various flowers in pots I’ll move up there. I bought a doorbell that runs on batteries on line and it was simple to install. For decades, people coming to the door either walked in if it was unlocked or stood there yelling, like we did as kids. At least when I was young, that’s how we behaved. We’d stand outside a friend’s house in Detroit and bellow. “Shirley! Shirley! Come on out!” When I lived in New York and visited friends who lived in what were then low rent lofts, I would stand outside and yell until they tossed a key down.But when I’m writing, I don’t hear anyone. You could stand outside and yell all day and until I ceased concentrating, I wouldn’t hear you. Also in the back of the house, you can’t hear someone at the front door. Now the new doorbell sounds upstairs, and it works.Our tomatoes are green, all but cherry tomatoes on the fence. So are the tomatoes of everyone here I ask, including my dentist. Friends in Vermont say they’re not getting any tomatoes at all. Last year it was hot and dry here and no rain at all, but we had so many tomatoes, we were passing them out in the street. Also peppers. Now only frying peppers are producing. We had more eggplants than five years combined. Now only the orientals are making. On the other hand, we had lettuce half way through July. The cucumbers did well and this week, I pulled the dying plants and Woody planted more in the main garden. The cole crops and second crop of cilantro are doing well – small but healthy.I spent an hour in the dentist’s chair on Thursday. I was very sore afterward. He drilled down to the soles of my feet on one of the two fillings. i was as exhausted as if I’d done exercise for an hour instead of lying there helpless. I watched the Cards v Cowboys for a while but it was too sloppy to stay with it after halftime. I just wanted something mindless to watch as I lay there after taking aleve and a lozenge of my medical marijuana, but it still felt bad. Today the deeper filling is sensitive, but the pain in my jaw is gone.No company this weekend; we’re not going out. We need a weekend off as August is full of people visiting. I don’t want to go anywhere or see anybody beyond Woody and the cats. Schwartzie is still Xena’s apprentice and imitates everything she does. Xena is getting even more possessive and protective of me. Unless she’s playing with one of the other cats, hunting mice or bugs or eating, she is always right close to me, watching. She likes when I’m at the computer or on the couch or cooking [she likes that a lot being our only cat who wants to share human food. She would kill for chicken.] She objects to my time in the garden or exercising. I did a lot of weeding this week, going out early before it got oppressively hot. Bindweed is our current worst problem. if you don’t have it, it’s wild morning glories, grows quickly and suffocates the plants it buries. We are plagued with it, have been for many years. It’s one reason Woody built raised beds in the lower garden.One veggie that seems delighted with this weather are pole beans. We’ve had several meals already, I’ve frozen 8 lbs. Today we’ll freeze four more pounds. Woody picked them and I prepped them, but we ran out of time yesterday. We started gravlax this morning before breakfast. It’ll take three or four days.