We had an hour’s rain this week on Tuesday, a real rain although short lived and then showers for a while on Thursday.  Everybody got a drink, anyhow, and the air was cleaned. I’ve frozen twenty pounds of bans so far.  That’s enough packages of pounds.  Now we need about 4 half-pounds, for adding to soups and stews.  We should get enough for that this week.  I wish I could figure out how to freeze eggplants. I’ve frozen enough peppers by now, that is, the bell peppers the Arapaho hot peppers are not red yet. Thursday when it got cool enough outside to work, I planted dill, 3 kinds of arugula and some basil seeds I had left –not two weeks ago when I started fall cucumbers and cilantro.  Then this in the furnace of August, all the basil plants shriveled up and died. Woody has been putting plastic mesh bags around the pumpkins to keep the critters off them. So far it’s been about 50% effective.

Willow and kitten Shaman are spending more time together, playing, sometimes just sitting and looking at each other – although that never lasts long.  One or the other will suddenly pounce.  They both are ambush predators by instinct.  Schwartzie prefers to wrestle.  Willow and Shaman wrestle a lot but also play King of the Mountain and chase.  They not only get into it at bedtime but now in the mornings. Shaman went to the vet this week for the last of his kitten shots and his rabies one year shot.  She pronounced him very healthy.  He didn’t seem afraid at the vet’s.  She said he purred so loud, it was hard to check his heart.

I finished the 2nd ms. I promised to blurb.  This one was an excellent book, a pleasure to read.  Now I’m wading through the 3rd, also from a previous year’s poet from my intensive poetry workshop I teach every year here in Wellfleet in June.  I swear that at least 80% of the poets who take that workshop get published afterward. The percentage may be even higher.  I still have a 3rd ms to deal with and a 4th from another of my students just came in.

I’d love to get back to reading books instead of mss.  I finished the last novel Le Carree wrote.  I don’t even know what I’ll read next, when I get the chance. It’s been so busy this week, I’ve barely had time to write. That gives me a brain itch. Woody was exposed to someone who called the next day and said she had been exposed to Covid.  AS she fixed his computer for some time and then they went out for a bite, he was very worried.  But she tested negative yesterday so he is in the clear.  We were trying to figure out how he could isolate in our house.

This will be a quiet weekend without seeing any friends, as we didn’t know till Friday that woody didn’t get Covid.  We have a friend, fully vaxed, who caught the new variant and was very sick in spite of being presumably protected.  He is in his 40’s and healthy. 

We watched the Pats v Giants game Thursday evening.  Fun to see football again.  Shaman seems to enjoy seeing big millionaires smash into each other.  We had a cat, many years ago, who used to watch football in season with Woody every Sunday.  Jim Beam.  Our other two, Schwartzie and Willow, pay no attention to television.