After a dry ten days that followed a very rainy spring, once again this week rain fell again.  This time we welcomed it, as plants were craving water.  I have frozen 15 pounds of spinach.  What a difference a wet cool spring makes after two years of warm dry, very dry springs. Last year we had broccoli three times and I froze one pound.  This year, we’ve eaten broccoli every other day and I have frozen 7 pounds and a big curried broccoli soup.  That with good bread from the French bakery was in our dinner one night.

Woody had staked all the tomato plants and laid down the irrigation system in all three vegetable gardens.  He has also done a first go through with the lawn mower around our land.  We have no planted lawn at all, as I view them as ecologically unsound.  Instead Woody mows weeds in many areas.  We keep a patch of wild grasses cut short in one area to serve as a kind of lawn where we can have outdoor parties when we choose. 

I have been going to physical therapy at Seashore Point faithfully.  I think it may be helping my injured ankle at least some.  I am doing the exercises Erin gives me every day unless my ankle is very angry.  Every time I see her, she adds another exercise or two.  Next week, I have to skip PT as I will be teaching in the morning, having conferences in the afternoon, doing related things in the evening as well as attempting to get everything else done at the same time.

I made five phone calls to Cape Cod Orthopaedics [their pretentious spelling] to finally get them to send the X-rays they took of my ankle to my regular doctor, Barbara Prazak. I will go the complete PT route before I consider an MRi or whatever. 

I read two novels, THE MURDERER’S DAUGHTERS and THE WIDOW OFWALL STREET by Randy Susan Meyers whom I met at the Providence book festival.  We bonded over the disorganization and the woes of being a novelist these days.  I enjoyed both npvels, but was particularly moved by the former.  I’m presently reading DEAD GIRLS, essays on pop culture by Alice Bolin.  I’ve been writing poems this week, three of them, and revising one that I wasn’t satisfied with from last month.   Dale and I got everything together for the workshop and put it in order of days – everything I need Monday, etc.  When I return Monday to the house with the sign-up sheet for the poets’ conferences, I’ll have him put the 15-poem mss. and my comments, usually 2-3 pages, in orde of each day’s conferences.  Then when I get back herewith little time to spare between the workshop and the afternoon’s conferences,I can briefly skim the folders before the conferences start.  When I finish the 3rd conference of the day, I collapse.  I’m too exhausted to do much of anything and don’t cook much the week of the workshop.  Thursday Melenie is coming to sell books at the reading and cook with me Friday for the class party.

Today we’ll be working outside, tidying, clearing, cutting, weeding.  It’s the best day for some time to come, sunny, pleasant, not too windy.