September Song

This week was cool with great sleeping weather and pleasant conditions for working outside. The humidity was low until Friday, when it began to creep upward.  We had various appointments this week that ate up time, but I was relaxed about it. My book went off to my agent on Tuesday, so I’m free to catch up, which I have been gradually doing. My office is a junkyard of papers and objects pushed aside. It will take a few days to get it into some kind of order.  Basically, all summer I worked on the book. 

We canned ten more pints of tomatoes. That’s the end of canning this year, but it was plain wonderful to have so many tomatoes after the last few years of scanty production.  A weird summer. Floods of tomatoes, but few zucchini. We never had a scarcity of zukes before, ever. We’re still getting beans, but the tomatoes have slowed down to what we two can eat.  We gave friends tomatoes while they were covering the dining room table and the platters under the western windows. I’d like to freeze two more pounds of beans, but we’ll see.

We had dinner at the Grotz’s last night, delicious and good company.  Today, at noon we’ll watch the Michigan Texas game. I am a loyal fan of the University of Michigan. I feel they saved my life by giving me a scholarship and have been good to me ever since. I won Hopwood Awards that let me go to France and support myself.  They bought my papers for a generous amount of money, more than other schools offered me. They had me do residencies and readings and held conference on my writing. Unfortunately, with so many seniors drafted into the NFL, this years’ team is seriously depleted. But, Go Blue!

It feels like Septmebers used to be, warm but comfortable days and cool nights. It hasn’t been this way in years. Our Septembers were just continuations of August heat and the humidity stayed high and sticky.  I hope it stays the wonderful way it had been lately.  I have always loved fall, my favorite season next to spring. I am not a lover of hot weather. Drought makes me nervous and edgy. I planted six kinds of lettuce, also escarole and endive. Then I put in radish seeds, red mustard, dill, Chinese Cabbage and arugula.

I finished The Lost Apothecary and found it a fascinating and gripping novel. All I wanted to do was just to sit and read it, although, of course, that is never possible. There’s so much to do. Still, it was delightful to find a novel that I found believable, unusual and one that held my interest all the way through till the end.  I recommend it to women friends.

I have been inviting people for Rosh Hashanah dinner here with a short ritual . It’s a bit less than a month away but I thought I should invite people before they made other plans. There should be nine of us so far. Then I’ll start planning for Melenie and Jay, who are visiting next weekend. September is a very busy month – all the medical and dental appointments we put off till after Labor Day, when we now have a chance of actually getting to doctors and dentists at least close to on time. We were surprised how much traffic we still encountered on the way to my dentist Thursday, but at least Route 6 was no longer a long strip of parking lot. And coming back, there was little traffic. The State is doing much construction on Route 6 in Wellfleet --changes nobody here wanted but the State went ahead. It will not make going anyplace easier.