This time of year, between reading, re-reading and annotating the fifteen poems each poet accepted to the juried intensive poetry workshop in June sent in; going through the lectures for each day’s session as well as creating handouts and photocopying them, we then, as Woody says, we add a farm.

I haven’t been writing, although I fantasize stealing some time to write at least one poem this week.  My garden and the pollinator garden are fully planted now.  Woody’s garden is 90% planted – he just has to fit in the tall marigolds he asked me to give him.  Now the lower garden – the one by the road—requires our attention.  All that’s planted in the Lower Garden so far is one raised bed in which beets, shallots and parsnips are coming up.  Woody is just beginning to put up supports for the pole beans and stringing them.  In midweek, we’ll plant the beans and then winter squash: many types of kabocha; think, small green pumpkin. They do very well here, the way butternut squashes used to. 

Dale took me to Ocean Job lots on Thursday.  For my birthday, he’d given me a gift card for $50.  I got a pretty pot in which I intend to pant the marjoram I started.  Also many food items – preserves, maple syrup, Indian chickpea bread, and various smoked seafoods…all at a good price.  Then we went to Marion’s pies in Chatham where we each got a big seafood pie.  They are excellent but not cheap.  However, we get two meals out of each, so its ends up costing less than pizza. 

Dale and I went to Bayberry nursery on Monday where I wanted to replace herbs that had died in the unusual cold snap when it went down almost to zero. I lost all my several-year-old and very bushy rosemary plants, all my thyme and all my tarragon.  I replaced what I could.  I still need to find lemon verbena and I need reasonably tall red flowering plants for the raised bed in front of the house.  I many things, including dahlias but it needs more.

All the houseplants are out on the front porch now except three aloe plants. Three others stay inside on the kitchen window sill because I not infrequently burn myself cooking.  Every year, I plant pansies with faces in long pots on the front porch, where they bloom until they die in August.  Then I plant lettuce or herbs in then.

I’m reading a nonfiction book, LAPIDARIUM by Hettie Judah.  It’s about rocks.  When I was a child, we took a vacation to Yellowstone right after my father got a new car.  He hadn’t had a new one until World War II was over.  He got a Hudson.  Being a staunch union man, he hated The bBg Three, especially Ford and GM.  Very few people now alive remember how they shot and locked out workers who tried to unionize.  While there, I tried to start a rock collection. There are very few loose rocks in Detroit. 

Not having time to write during this hectic period makes me feel incomplete and hollow.  I actually like to write.  I know many writers find it hard or even hell.