Apps for people and cats

After the last two weeks, this was a relatively quiet week of putting things in order, catching up on neglected posts, interspersed by a record number of medical appointments. First, Mingus went in for blood work as did Schwartzie, Duni, the vet, found a broken tooth and inflamed gum in Schwartzie. So our long haired black beauty had to go in fasted for a dental appointment yesterday. Oddly, the cat who was most upset by his absence was Xena, the Warrior Queen. Well, aftre Duni put Schwartzie under anesthetic, the tooth wasn’t broken. The gun had been injured somehow and had grown party over the tooth. She ut it back and cleaned his teeth, but the whole procedure was unnecessary and very expensive. I’m still pissed. He went through all that for nothing and was very upset, and so are we, spending $1000 we could really use.I had a couple of doctor’s appointments for my back. My back hurts less now but my hip hurts just as much. One thing at a time. I had a long dental appointment [Me and Schwartzie both] Woody and I also had appointments for flu shots yesterday. Another week of a certain amount of rain. The drought does seem to finally have finished. It’s gone from one extreme to the other, but better for the ground water and the plants.I have been potting herbs and have pretty much finished that. Now I’m potting some decorative plants. You never know how many of the herbs or decorative plants will survive being dug up and repotted and brought into a warm dry house. I think i may have filled more pots than we have room for easily. I’m going to dig the elephant ears and try to prepare it for storage as it hasn’t worked to buy bulbs and start them myself and it can be hard to find plants in the spring; the same with caladium. I have two big old pots that flank the entrance to the brick area that leads to the house. I like to grow elephant ears, caladium, coleus and a decorative leaved plant I’ve forgotten the name of, if I ever knew it. But I try to find it every year and promptly forget what the sign said. I’m trying to decide if I should try to pot a couple of cilantros.We’re still eating the good apples from Maine but will run out next week. Good fruit is hard to find, hard to find peaches that don’t taste like styrafoam, apples that aren’t mealy or tasteless, strawberries with all the flavor and aroma of a piece of wood. I pity children growing up now who are told it’s healthy to eat fruit that has no flavor. Agribusiness has destroyed fruit as they have commercial tomatoes.This week I was mostly revising poems that weren’t completed or satisfactory. Every few weeks, I pause in writing new poems and go back and polish older ones. I revise regularly but sometimes I need to check myself and go over recent poems to see if they need improvement.Tonight we’re having supper – Woody and I and Stephen and Dale – in our friend Gigi’s gallery, not Ralph and Gigi’s house. Ralph will be there, of course. It’s in the house that Gigi grew up in. Before she opened the gallery, she renovated the house extensively. She’s very proud of the gallery and how it all turned out. I’ve been there a couple of times but Woody one less time and Dale and Stephen have never been to the gallery.Woody will be planting our garlic today, perhaps tomorrow also. I divided the heads into individual cloves yesterday. All the fall greens I planted in my garden have germinated and are growing, so we should with any luck have salad in three weeks or less. The basil is finishing. The tomatoes are all gone. The stakes and cages are stowed. I added the last eggplant to a dish last night. But the peppers are still producing. I’ve frozen more than enough and have been making suppers with them, most recently chicken paprikash. The Chinese cabbage is perfect – for us and the slugs that are eating the outer leaves to lace. I’m starting to cook our pumpkins and five kinds of winter squash and moving clothes around – sundresses away for the winter, long sleeved dresses out.Swiss chard is ready but a fat rabbit ate the Brussells sprouts. The sugar maples are turning brilliantly. It’s a beautiful time of year and brisk so I feel like getting outside and working in the gardens.