A Much Welcome Quiet Week

A RELATIVELY QUIET WEEKWe got all the main crop tomatoes into the big garden this week, three oranges, three pinks, three reds and Black Krims. We planted half the eggplants, the Italian type. We hope to get back into the gardens today, Sunday. Wednesday was a true rainy day, really lovely. All the trees except locusts are leafing out or fully leafed already. Flowering trees are everyplace except near the ocean or bay. Our sour cherry tree and a pear tree were in full bloom here, as well as the pink dogwood and its child, the white dogwood and a couple of shads. Also a bush my old friend Penny planted decades ago that I thought had died out is suddenly in full bloom beside the driveway, covered with deep gold roundish blossoms. I’m sure she told me what it was, but I’ve long ago forgotten. If you have any guesses, let me know. It’s not a sizable bush, just about two feet tall with arching branches. We’re expecting more rain this week. Both crabapples are blooming as well and the wood scillas that have spread themselves around our land, as well as lunaria that has done the same. The sweet cicely and white lilacs are in full blossom.I’ve been reading more manuscripts for the conferences during my juried intensive poetry workshop. I read reread each ms. And then make usually two pages or so of notes about the poems. That forms the basis for the half hour we spend together discussing their work. I give them the notes at the end of the conference.In spite of all the garden work and the mss., I’m back to writing poems. Two this week. Woody has somewhat less time than usual to work in the garden. He goes to Coco Fitness four times a week, religiously. Spaulding rehab where I’ve had two bad experiences and would never go back to is expending in Orleans. They took over the space Coco used so now Woody has to go to Harwich four times a week to do his workouts. The various boards in Orleans are giving Coco a hard time, since it isn’t set up like other gyms. There are no showers. People change in the bathrooms if they want to get out of their gym clothes. If you join, you get a key and can go any time 24 hours a day and night, on your preferred schedule. The machines all know you and are programmed for your exercise, which they change constantly. Going to Harwich has one advantage: it’s really like a suburb and has many more facilities than any town on the Outer Cape. The drugstores are twice our size, there’s a good Chinese takeout , many restaurants of all levels including some fine ones. So he isn’t complaining, but summer will be a different story. The traffic could take him an hour or more each way.Saturday it was supposed to rain hard for a few hours. We had light rain on and off instead. Today should be clearer and I’m hoping we can get into the garden, although every Sunday, Woody does the week’s shopping in Orleans and I wash all the towels and linens. I’d like to put begonias in a long pot and also plant acidanthera bulbs.Saturday night we went to Provincetown to have supper with our friend Sophia who works at the fine arts work center and will be leaving for the summer next week. Another friend, Ann, was there. She broke her clavicle and is in a sling. Two men were there whom we hadn’t met before, a fiction writer who had been in the FAWC this year and a chiropractor who is Ann’s new boyfriend. Great food, great company.We watched, if that’s the right word for something barely visible, the Preakness when we got home around 11:30 –I’d taped it when we left after observing the earlier races. The fog was so thick at on the racetrack that if I’d had the sound off, I’d never have known which horse won. It sounds as if it was an exciting race so it’s too bad it was invisible.I hope the Belmont will be dry and watchable.