A New Assistant and an Ongoing Garden

I interviewed another [6th] possibility this week and I liked her. I knew who she was, at least a bit before she came over. The part time work is good for her, as she has two children, one in preschool and the other in elementary. My days and hours seem to work for both of us. We’ll see how it goes next Monday when she comes to work for the first time. On the basis of that hope, I wrote two poems this week.  I had stopped for a week, as the pile of poems written but just lying there depressed me. My poetry group met this week. That was very useful for me.  One of the two poems that were critiqued was a haibun (a Japanese literary form that combines prose and haiku): “Trees have green blood”

We have been working together starting to freeze spinach. I had always done the boiling part alone until Woody packaged it for the freezer. This time, he took over the lifting of the heavy boiling pot and It was much easier for me. We finished in half he time.  Now I don’t dread that job as much.  We froze four and a half pounds. so far. Last  year, I froze 12 pounds, just about enough to carry us through those cold winter nights when creamed spinach is the perfect side dish. That should be enough to carry us through the winter with all the vegetables I process.

Our friend Tasha came over  for dinner Thursday evening. I made a spicy New England pot roast. I had found an old recipe from the early 19th century that I have made several times. It uses onions, carrots, celery and parsnips, cranberries and horseradish. They usuggest broth; I used red wine. We had dumplings for an appetizer and fresh salad from the garden long with the pot roast. Tasha brought an elegant and tasty custard dessert with fresh raspberry syrup.

The birds are mostly quiet now, as they have eggs or young in their nests.  We put out the remaining houseplants,  including all but the kitchen window sill aloe veras, my decade old bay tree, and the Christmas cactus that my BFF Gigi gave me. It had grown in her mother’s kitchen all her life. She split it  in two after her mother died and gave me half. It’s older than I am and I’m 90.

Woody has transplanted peppers, Oriental and Italian type eggplants, and two kinds of basil that I started from the greenhouse to his, the main, garden. As both our gardens are full up, we looking for places for the cucumbers.  His next huge task is putting up towers in the lower garden, stringing them, and then planting pole beans underneath. He long ago planted parsnips down there and after weeding found that he had great germination. (New recipe: air fryer parsnip fries).) We’ll see if there’s room there and if so perhaps some of the cucumbers could fit.

I’m reading a book on the search for the origins of Indo-European and even the presumed earlier Proto-indo-European   As a poet, languages fascinate me. As does prehistory. I subscribe to an American and a British archeological magazine. Among the zines that come in, those are the two I read at once.