We enjoyed our first salads of the year this week and by some time this coming week, we should be enjoying spinach as a vegetable, as opposed to a few leaves in the salads.  As soon as the weather is a bit warmer this coming week, it’s time to transplant the paste tomatoes and perhaps also the pumpkins to start us off. I’d like to plant some more lettuce seeds where the germination was poor, but it’s no rally necessary – it’s just we both never feel we have enough lettuce of different kings.

I have had my application accepted at the Westfield MA shelter and are waiting for a possible kitten. I have also put in applications in another shelter or two. I’ve given up trying to find a kitten on Cape Cod of the Boston area. Going much farther afield.  What we can get to and back in a day. 

I read the first three manuscripts of 15 poems each this week.  Since every poet applying to the annual juried intensive poetry workshop sends their best 5 poems, it can be a shock when you get 15 poems. They can include the five they submitted, but I urge them not to, as those, presumably, were quite finished.  The poems worth the time in the conferences are the ones that aren’t polished, and need help. 

It has been grey and cloudy a lot, with some rain lately.  We had a couple of sunny days, but not as many as I’d like.  We need the rain, but a grey day that’s windy and no precipitation feels like a waste.  this spring has been uncommonly windy. Wind can really irritate my eyes so I tend not to want to garden when the winds are strong.

We had a respite from the nightly mouse hunts, or at least a respite from their success – which involves a bloody bathtub in the morning.  Something began to attack our cole crops this week, cutting down the Brussels sprouts plants and nibbling the broccoli.  Woody treated them with PLANTSKYDD yesterday, an organic and safe repellent from Sweden. 

Today is Kentucky Derby Day.  Before Covid changed our lives, it feels like permanently we used to have 20 people or so.  This year, only 6 in all.  I will probably repair way too much food.  We’re serving our gravlax.  I intend to grill the shrimp with lots of garlic.  Tun stuffed mushrooms. Guacamole.  And Woody just said he’d like chopped liver.  Enough to feed at least ten.  This is not including what Dale and Gigi may bring.

Woody will be making his famous mint juleps. I have printed the names of horses on strips of paper.  Those who draw frontrunners get 3 horses, a high betted ones and two very longshots.  Those who draw ones ranked in the middle, like 8 or 10 to 1 get three other horses as well.