Our 40th or 46th Anniversary

It depends on when we measure, from June 2nd 1976 when we first got together as lovers, or June 2nd 1982, when we married.  Either way, we celebrate June 2nd.  We timed out wedding that way.  We were married by a woman rabbi in our dear dead friend Elise’s apartment in Cambridge, where her kitten climbed into a roasted turkey sitting in the kitchen, while we were having the ceremony.  What a thrill for a kitten –being inside a huge room made of great food.  Less of a thrill for us.

We celebrated our anniversary by going to Moby Dick’s, across the marsh from us.  It’s BYO which we love and we bought a bottle of chilled champagne.  Woody and I each ordered the lobster dinner: a hard-shelled lobster still not that far into summer, corn on the cob and incredibly Wellfleet steamers.  We were treated to a rich chocolate dessert for our anniversary.

I have been reading and annotating the manuscripts from poets in the June Workshop.  I try to do three a week, since each takes me the better part of a day. In the intense garden season of late May and June, I could only do two mss a week.  I hope to finish by next Monday.  Woody picked up the print-outs of material for the workshop, the handouts for each day.  The shorter ones we just printed or xeroxed ourselves, Dale and I.  But the multiple page handouts, some of which run to 12 or 14 pp. needed to be done at Staples.

Woody got all the drip system down over this week.  His next big job is to stake the paste tomatoes in my garden, the maincrops in his, and to die the sungold cherry tomatoes to the fence. We had a garden catastrophe this week. A woodchuck ate ALL of our broccoli, all 12 plants. It had the heads out of the centers and left the surrounding leaves.  We have NO broccoli.  I love broccoli.

I’m trying to persuade Woody to buy some plants if he can find any.  He was going to put PLANTSKYDD on the next morning, but the woodchuck got there first. I so loved it when we had cats who could go out and catch any varmints they wanted to.  But the coywolves came and put an end to that. They killed our wonderful orange cat Max and we’ve never let a cat out since.

We were invited to supper last weekend @ Karen’s Saturday night and to Tasha’s on Sunday night.  That made it much easier for us to push really hard in the gardens. I still have to find places for Genevese basil I started and three six-packs of marigolds. I planted one six-pack before it turned wet, but I don’t have a lot of room left.  Started too many flowers this early spring.  I’d do one less zinnia and one less marigold next year.

I’m doing catch-up in the house but hoping to get outside this afternoon when it might clear.  If it isn’t raining, we should be able to work.  It was cool and damp this week after blistering heat.  It’s no longer normal seasons here, the way it was for 40 years.  Climate change has hit us hard here.  We go from one extreme to the other.  Hot cold, too wet, too dry.  That’s how it is now.