This whole week has been trying to get as much done for the workshop and before the workshop.  I know from the 12 yeas I’ve done this that I’ll be too exhausted at least four of the days to do anything useful in the garden.  The 5th day I have only one conference after morning workshop instead of three half-hours.  That afternoon , Melenie and I will cook together for the party.  We enjoy cooking together.  It’s fun and we talk throughout.  She’ll be coming Thursday in time for supper and for the reading I do with the workshop poets, reading some poems at the end – at the library as usual but we had to skip during the worst of Covid. For 2 years, no workshop readings. We usually get a decent crowd and fill the large room.

As I write this, everything is planted except some of the basil I started.  Some’s in the ground, but some is still seeking a vacant place. I filled in empty slots in the lower garden as every year, some of the pole beans [the only type I grow] and some of the winter squashes will not have germinated and some seedlings will have been eaten. There’s no way to fence the lower garden on one side of it, so rabbits and any critter interested, has a way in.

I had to program the DVD for the entire next week, as I’ll be too exhausted to do much more than gape at the TV three of the nights.  I have everything in order finally for the workshop, the brief lectures and often long print-outs for the morning sessions, besides workshopping their assignments’.  I had Woody get some stuff for the party Friday, but next Friday, the day we’ll actually be doing most of the cooking, he’ll have to buy the things that must be fresh. I can’t see buying peppers this Friday and having them sit in the fridge for a week.

Dale will bring some dessert and Melenie is going to bake madeleines.  I’ll hard-boil eggs the night before and do a couple of other things. Can’t do much, as that’s the evening Melenie is here and we’re performing for the audience at the library.  Our friend Tasha will make something. She’s here for a couple of weeks.  She teaches molecular biology at Dartmouth.  Her mother Stephanie will also be the party, along with the poets and any significant others that are vacationing here with them while they work and learn.

This week, finally we had a good amount of rain and everything grew visibly.  The tomatoes are much farther ahead than they were last year or the year before.  We lost all of our gorgeous broccoli.  A woodchuck ate the entire row in one night. They looked perfect, as he didn’t touch the leaves, but just ate the heads inside.

My back was really bothering me the way it hasn’t in a long time.  I saw my osteopath Dr Libby this Thursday and he helped a lot. He said it would take another visit or two to get it entirely under control, but I can’t see him for two weeks. After the workshop, it will be time to freeze red and black currants, many local strawberries to freeze as many pints as possible, two quarts for pies, and to keep some out to make freezer jam. If we are lucky and birds don’t beat us to it, we should have sour cherries too, for pie and strawberry mousse.

We have a demented catbird who attacks his reflection in the windows for hours on end whenever the sun shines.  Some mornings he wakes me since the bedroom faces East where the sun rises and hits those windows.  Later on, he throws himself against the bay windows in the livingroom.  Willow got rid of him earl one morning when he woke her and me.  She hurled herself against the window and scared him.  But he is blasé now about the cats, as he realizes they can’t touch him.