When Home is All There Is
WHEN HOME IS ALL THERE IS
We are holed up like most people now. We go into the garden and greenhouse and back into the house – it’s been chilly and often wet. Woody shops, carefully, usually during early morning. He picks up the mail and goes to the dump, never dealing with anyone, where recycling has been cancelled but we’re charged for everything we don’t recycle. He doesn’t trust take-out. But we’re getting clams sort of remotely, without human contact from a shellfish farmer.
It’s been a mostly grey spring so far. It got very cold again for two days and nights, but now is staying above freezing. Woody planted spinach and is working on the new raised beds. I am starting cucumbers, Genevese basil and marigolds in the storeroom. Almost everything I’ve started is now out in the greenhouse, except for the eggplant seedlings – they’re still in the bay window. Basil will join them when it germinates, but everything else will go out to the small walk-in greenhouse. Every few days, I thin the seedlings there. I watch the weather closely all day. When the sun comes out, I crack or open all the way the greenhouse door, as it heats up rapidly. When it gets cloudy against, I hobble outside and close the door. Some days. I do this five times. Today in my garden I put out some lettuce plants I had started and seeds of radish, arugula and garden cress.
I am writing poems but more slowly as there is so much less stimulation. The news is all virus. I see only Woody and the cats, Dale once a week. I’m phone-phobic but I’m calling friends so have some contact. I keep getting 75 or so “urgent” requests for money from Democratic candidates. I wish they would understand most of us are not making any income whatsoever and have had to cut back on everything we can do without. Liberals with money can donate, now that they’re not scared Bernie will change things. I’m still donating what little I can to services that help people directly and to no-kill shelters that are overflowing now.
Xena and Schwartzie are polar opposites in temperament. His motto is the Greek transliteration thenperazi. Don’t worry, don’t fuss. It’s all good. Xena worries constantly. She tries to protect me. She fusses over Mingus, who is twice her age and half her size. She runs to the windows and sits there glowering when we go into the garden. She checks me out every morning to make sure everything’s copacetic.
I just finished Hilary Mantel’s WOLF HALL. I want the 2nd book in the trilogy, but of course the library is closed. Now I’m starting the galleys of RabbiArthur Waskow’s new book, DANCING IN THE EARTHQUAKE, for a blurb.
It’s a bonanza time for people in Wellfleet who like seafood, but a hard time for the shellfish farmers. The wholesalers sent their seafood back because restaurants are closed down. They’re selling them to people they know here. We got 100 clams and will soon get some oysters [after I prepare clams even more ways – so far woody made a dish of clams in white sauce on pasta and I made a clam rice dish.]
I talk with my chosen daughter Melenie every Thursday @3:30. I make appointments with friends for calls, since a lot of the time I ignore the phone. It’s generally someDemocratic candidate’s people wanting money I don’t have now. Melenie can’t come for my birthday, which will be a very low key affair, just the two of us. Woody says he doesn’t want to celebrate his birthday at all – he had originally planned to do something special as it’s his 70th, but now he wants to forget it. Nobody knows how all this is going to play out.