Poet and Farmwife

I’ve been dividing my time this week pretty evenly between working with Nina on my new poetry book plus writing two new poems and revising one from two weeks ago, sending out poetry submissions – and the work from harvesting. This week I froze 8 ½ pounds of beans—pole beans green, yellow and purple. We canned 11 pints of paste tomatoes and more sauce, which my Italian friends call gravy. We are not getting any Italian eggplants, but we are eating plenty of Oriental eggplants, along with zucchini, pattypans and frying peppers. Lots of herbs, too.

We haven’t been very social this week (except for Woody participating in a Cole Porter tribute in Truro) as the harvest work keeps us busy and tired by evening. Nina and I chat a lot while working and that fills in some of my desire to see others right now. Neither Woody nor I feel like cooking a big meal for friends, tidying the house and then cleaning up afterward; the work of a dinner party. Also, most of our friends are either working two jobs or dealing with guests. We are living in air-conditioning most days this weeks, but not all.  Luckily, we have the heat pump style units forin my office, both bedrooms, the dining room and living room. There is no way to have one in the kitchen, where it gets plenty hot. No wall space room for vents, alas. We can only use a fan. The kitchen is walled with cement blocks.

This weekend I am hoping to finally weed my garden and the herb bed, especially. Also, besides tomato sauce, I want to pick a basket full of basil and make pesto to use and freeze. It freezes well and so we can cook with it all year, if I make enough.

My eyes have settled down, letting me catch up with the science and archeology zines I subscribe to and now I can finally get back to the two books I had started earlier, a novel and a nonfiction book about proto-languages.  The novel is the second in a series by an archeologist set during the Viking era.

It has been too hot to work outside for a nine-day period. B ut Friday, it cooled down pleasantly and the weekend is supposed to be warm but with low humidity. Great improvement. Although Woody is almost always too warm and I’m almost always feeling a chill, we both hate high humidity.

Every day since she was taken by ambulance to the hospital with life threatening problems right after last February’s blizzard, I call my friend Karen every day to check in on her and to make sure she knows she’s not been forgotten. She’s been in one rehab  facility after another since. She’s finally due to come home this coming week, and I hope that does happen. She will need to have full time help for a while. She gets a lot of support from her sons but especially Tony who lives and owns an acclaimed restaurant in Wellfleet.  When I got out of the ICU and was not allowed to be alone, she was one of the friends came through and who hung out with me.