Attack of the Wasp

I’ll get to Ida shortly, but today was a gorgeous day just as yesterday was and I was happy to get into the garden.  I was pulling done plants out of my pollinator bed closest to the house when a small wasp stung me on the chin.  It hurt like hell. I finished the bed but that was the end of my planned perfect day.  I have never before been stung by a wasp.  I’ve had a couple of bee stings when I was having eye operations and was legally blind. I knew what to do to draw the stinger out from a bee stinger..

But that made things worse.  The pain spread up my cheeks and down my neck. Tears were involuntarily running down my face. I looked up wasp stings on the internet, took Aleve, washed it to get some of the venom out and then I began putting an icepack and then another on my chin on ten minutes off five minutes on ten minutes, off five minutes.  Without the Michigan football game to watch, I would have gone crazy.  At this moment it’s still hurting but the swelling has gone down and the pain has diminished to a bearable level. 

Ida had lost most of its punch when it came to Cape Cod.  We got four to five inches of rain, something we desperately needed as we had been in a serious drought all summer, although not as total as last year.  It was as if the weather had Covid and a high fever and a lot of sweating. 

I know millions of people are suffering greatly from Ida, but we can’t help but be grateful to have abundant rain at last.  We had a tornade warning on our cells in the wee hours, waking again, but it only touched down in Dennis, where it caused tree damage and a mess but nobody was hurt.

We had some wind but nothing much.  My assistant and friend Dale lost power but for once, we didn’t.  The rain was so heavy that night when it arrived at midnight, it woke me, Woody, the cats.  It came in waves and every time the rain began to pound loudly on the roof, it woke me.  I slept little but didn’t mind because we were finally getting the soaking we wanted.  Everything perked up afterward.  The basil I was going to pull because it was brown with scorching began putting out new growth. The zucchini and patty pans we were going to take out came back to life and made new summer squash.  The tomatoes that we hadn’t already taken out also stirred into at least minor productivity.  The beans are happy again. With our well, we can only give gardens a certain amount.

I couldn’t believe the cucumbers I planted a few weeks ago. They grew the next day while we were waiting for the garden to dry out.  The vines went rampant and are already flowering.  Yesterday  I was able to get into my garden with  the weather comfortable both in temperature and lack of humidity.  I planted six kinds of lettuce, also escarole and endive; radishes, mustard, dill, chervil and wasabi and regular arugula.  I have to thin the seedlings of Chinese cabbage, regular green cabbage and bok choi that are now on the sunporch.  I’ll do that today.  Then I want to work on my pollinator garden and my herb garden. 

This evening we’re going over to Chuck and Wilderness for supper. To get to their house, we go into Nickerson State Park, drive a few miles and then turn off on a dirt road till we see their house up on the hill with a creek running down by the stairs.  Both of them are therapists. Wilderness is also a fine writer.  She’s in my poetry group. Her plays have been produced a number of times and places.

I have gone back to my novel, THE HOUSE AT HOPE’S END. Having failed to find a New York publisher, I will start trying small presses after I finish the current revisions.  I’m halfway through.  So I didn’t write any poems this week or most of last week. 

I am not looking forward to a long and difficult dental appointment this week. But it has to be done. My friend Indira came over Wednesday.  She’s a published novelist and we share the same editor at Knopf, me for poetry, Indira for fiction.  She has mourning doves nesting on her deck.  I notice the cats pretty much ignore mourning doves here. They are incensed by the catbirds, the chipmunks, the squirrels –all of which taunt them through the screens.  Willow is particularly angry at the catbirds that are nesting in the main garden and get right outside the sunporch in the rhododendron bushes and tease her. If she could, she’d show them a thing or two!