Tuesday, since Woody has his interview program on WOMR, Dale was kind enough to take me to my new osteopath and then we went to Marion’s Pies in Chatham where I bought a seafood pie.  Dale got a pie for himself and two for friends.  Those pies are expensive but they last us for two suppers, so it works out. And they’re delicious. The crust is perfect.  They don’t stint on the seafood – lobster, scallops and a white fish, possible halibut?  It was a complete meal with a salad both nights. Avocado tomato & mixed green.

The osteopath in Orleans I went to worked on my back.  It does seem less painful. My left elbow he left alone except to examine it. He wants me to get an X-Ray and I have been trying to set one up.  He also wants a bone density test.  I’m not sure where to get that.  I keep trying to get through to Outer Cape Health in Ptown where I know they can do the X-ray, but so far their dysfunctional phone system won’t let me make an appointment.

Thursday I started seven kinds of maincrop tomatoes.  We’re growing three less kinds this year so we can space them better.  I started one less kind of paste tomato last week – they’ve all germinated and are in the bay window in the livingroom now.  We only grow one cherry tomato, sungold, and they sprouted too.

Then things proceeded to get weird.  The osteopath had insisted before I start rehab on my elbow, I should get is Xrayed and have a bone density test. I called Outer Cape Health in Ptoiw.  Their phones were down so that when on the 7th try I finallyi got through to the desk, they couldn’t connect me to ttje Xray department.  Finally two days later, I got through to them but they had never received a requisition from the doctor, so couldn’t schedule me.  I called him. Instead of  his wife/receptionist answering, he answered, yelled at me that he couldn’t talk and hung up.  When I called back the next day and the next, no answer , no answering machine. The requisition never came through.  I contacted my doctor, who sent through the requisition this weekend. So tomorrow, when they’re open, I will try again to set up an appointment. I have no idea what’s going on.

I read a manuscript accepted to a press by one of my previous workshop poets and gave her a blurb .  I have been working on my office, to make it less ofc a complete mess.  Also my bedroom.  Then Woody vacuumed both rooms. We are not much as housekeepers.  Before anybody comes over, I always have to clear the coffee table that has always a great pile of cat and human stuff on it.

We had a couple of cold days but mostly it’s been fine.  Melenie has a foot and a half of snow; we have none.  In Massachusetts and especially on the Cape, weather is very local.  It can be raining in Eastham [the next town over] and sunny here. There can be thunderstorms on the mainland and clear skies here.  It can be blowing hard here and calm on the mainland.  The weather that Boston has is often different from ours and both are different from Easthampton, where Melenie lives in the Pioneer valley. 

Microsoft has taken a good and functional spelling checker and turned it into an unusable mess.  They have dozens of techies working all the time to make programs fancier and more complicated and finally almost unusable and sometimes completely so.  Now I have to go through every document a word at a time to check the spelling myself.

It’s chilly today but supposed to start warming up tomorrow. I’m hoping to get outside this week.  I want to thin the seedlings in he greenhouse first thing.  To begin work on some other perennials beds.  To uncover the rhubarb and the tree peonies.  I loot one during the terrible drought last summer.  I only have two now.  I llost the beautiful  yellow tree peony that I’d had for over twenty-five years. I won’t know what else we lost until plants grow or don’t, leaf out or don’t. And of course we’re trying to figure out how to protect the spring cole crops, as varmints ate every single broccoli and red cabbage plant down to the ground last April.   We got nothing.  Woody is feel very pessimistic.  Since we lost our resident fox, the predation has been much worse.  When the cats we had  twenty years ago, we never had a problem with mice, voles, rabbits or chipmunks.  But then the coywolves came and killed and ate wonderful Max.

The daffodils spears are about 8 inches or so high; the daylilies have begun to grow.  When I was working on clearing the pollinator gardens, I was surprised to see growth of some perennials in each of the three narrow beds.  No matter that we have cold days or nights, spring is here!