Summer Heat in Early May

I have begun working on the mss. the poets in my June juried intensive poetry workshop submitted as a basis for their conferences.  So far, I’ve worked on three of them. I allow a day for each.  It’s intense work but interesting. After 15 poems, I have a reasonable idea the strengths of each poet and the areas they need to work on.

I thought I was doing a radio program this last Thursday, but it turned out to have become a ZOOM reading, an hour and a half with a lot of interruptions with questions.  It was sponsored by the Monthly Review, where I often publish my most political poems

 We got the final five main-crop tomatoes in last Sunday.  the weather has turned sunny, dry and hot, making garden work more laborious.  I had been wearing jeans but almost passed out on Thursday.  I had no garden tees unpacked, so yesterday, Woody brought out a good-sized old suitcase and I was able to put away more winter sweaters. sweat pants and warm skirts and get out at least some summer garden pants and short sleeved garden tees.  But today was so warm that even that change wasn’t sufficient. I ended up in a tee and shorts – I don’t remember the last time I wore shorts outside.  We have mosquitoes already since we got a decent amount of rain this spring up until a few days ago. I have finished planting my new narrow raised beds for pollinators.  I have only 4 Shasta daisy plants to add when they come in a couple of weeks. I started cosmos, callendula and zinnias in the little greenhouse, but I mail-ordered perennials.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find butterfly weed for Monarchs this year.

I had a two-and-a-half hour dental appointment on Wednesday that I had been anxious about and dreading.  it was very difficult, but Olga my dentist fixed it so I don’t have to go back for more torture until into September. I have a busy schedule from now until July and in the summer, it’s impossible to get to her for an appointment because of the traffic and gridlock here in parts of July and all of August, Labor Day is late this year and it’s also Rosh Hashanah.  I hate it when the High Holidays are early because it’s not air-conditioned where our havurah has services and it’s hot and stuffy there.

Everybody we’re close to and we too have been having plumbing problems.  Dale was without water today.  We had multiple problems. Our plumber was able to fix most of them but will have to come back in a couple of weeks for the other one.

All our three sheds have some critter living in them.  When for my first thirty years here, my cats could go out, we never had problems. But since the coy-wolves came over the bridge and became top predator here, and after Max was killed and eaten by them, the cats are indoors only.  We miss their hard work outside, although Willow killed two mice inside this week.