Last Sunday was the first day we tried to reclaim our normal lives after the week of workshop ending with a party for 25 people.  Without Melenie’s help, I couldn’t do it with my ankle hurting and me hobbling around leaning on a cane.  Today I only have to use the cane sometimes.  I made seven half pints of pesto from garlic scapes that Woody cut today and froze six of them. I want to use the seventh on broccoli tonight – Woody just harvested the last of the spring broccoli.  I also froze a quart of rhubarb – all we’re going to be able to freeze this year as we put in a new bed and only a couple of the old plants that we moved survived.  The new ones look good but it’s their first year here. Can’t pull any yet from the new plants. I did a bigger house laundry that usual – two weeks of sheets and a quilt from the sun porch.

Xena has finally forgiven me for my absence during the week and the final affront, a party Friday evening when she was locked up in one wing of the house with the other cats –total indignity. Monday we finished the last of the leftovers from the party. Now back to healthy eating and back to me cooking again. Woody was so sick of cooking by Thursday when Melenie was here that he drove to Dennis and back to get Chinese takeout at Sun On.

This week was time for freezing local strawberries.  It gets harder every year to find local strawberries in place of those big woody tasteless ones shipped fromCalifornia. We’ve having a couple of dry sunny days after all the rain.  I’m still sneezing.  In every other year, I have a week of allergy when the birch trees release their pollen, but this year I have been sneezing and with a runny noise and itchy eyes ever since the first week of April.  I imagine with the climate change we can’t help but notice here [we’ve gone from a solid Zone 6 to 7A] including many new bugs and weeds [as well as some birds disappearing along with butterflies and new ones like turkey vultures making homes here] is affecting allergies as well as everything else.  Everyone has been complaining about allergies so I know it’s nothing personal to me. We are harvesting zucchini, pattypans and yellow squash now as well as cucumbers.  Lots of herbs.  The lavender has begun to bloom.  Shortly I’ll cut it to dry and put in with my sweaters.

This week I went back to physical therapy on my angry ankle and also to Dr Libby in Harwich for my back, as it’s been acting up over the last few weeks.  I haven’t been to him since the first week in May. In old age, we sometimes see more of doctors thanwe do of our friends, but I had time with Melenie last week and Wednesday I had lunch with Gigi.  I’m trying to make order in my bedroom and my office.  So much accumulated while I was getting ready for the workshop and then conducting it.  Sunday I put away most of the pile of clothes I just abandoned in a heap during the workshop, but some I didn’t get to till Wednesday. My office is more complicated because I put off answering a number of queries.  I’m just starting to think about putting together a new poetry book.

I have some hope for the first time that perhaps, perhaps my ankle is strengthening and while it hurts often enough, the pain tends to be far less severe.  A while ago, it would get bad enough so I’d feel like crying, but not lately.  I have been weeding my raised beds – now that the workshop is over.  The weeds multiplied while I couldn’t get into the gardens – first rain every day and night and then in the midst of all the rain, the workshop. I am doing the very preliminary work on putting a new poetry collection together – I told my editorI’d have it for her in September.  I’ll have to stop in a couple of days because I’ll be judging a full length ms.contest for Marsh hawk Press.  I have no idea how long these mss will be.  I hoping to get back to my new book sooner rather than bye and bye.  It’s the kind of work I enjoy – finding the structure of the new collection and figuring out what to put in and what not to.  Then I’ll start working on a good title.

It's gotten warmer but not like Boston that may be enjoying a bit of a heat wave.  The surviving roses [I lost most of my roses in the two years of drought – I couldn’t get enough water to them] but since I grow no hybrid teas or floribundas but hardier roses, some of them have survived and are blooming like crazy.  I haven’t been able to get to them this year to give them any help, but still the survivors are blooming like crazy. I’m hoping I can give them some attention in July.

I only wrote one poem this week as I was printing out poems written since my last collection MADE IN DETROIT was put together and dividing them into categories.  I’ll continue that once I’ve judged the Marsh Hawk contest – I hope.