Wills and Greens

Thursday, we drove to Hyannis to sign our updated wills. We’ve been putting that off for several weeks, which was stupid. It’s a relief to get it done at last at our lawyer’s office. Wills are a nuisance and obnoxious things to deal with, no less think about; but like death itself, the alternative to making a will is chaos and giving money away blindly.

Leeks are coming in and I’m beginning to cook them. Beans are slowing down. Brussels sprouts look pretty good. I don’t think we’ll wait for the first frost to start eating them as they’re too tempting to critters. I’ve started cooking our Swiss chard. I like the brightly colored kind with red stems. The last of the peppers, the bell peppers [I froze packages of the biggest for stuffing and I’ll cook the rest]; frying peppers that were so abundant this year and the magnificent Arapaho red hot peppers. They are both gorgeous scarlet and plenty hot..

 Nina and I are submitting poems to zines again after devoting most of our time and energy to the new poetry collection, which will go off to my agent on Monday. She was back from vacation on Friday, yesterday.

Woody is planting garlic today after I broke the heads of four kinds of hard-necked garlic into individual cloves and put aside for immediate use all the cloves too small to plant. We only grow hard neck garlic. Those varieties have far more flavor and are easier to use.

In spite of my poor eyesight, I managed to do some sewing this week. My favorite nightgown needed hemming. A foot pillow and quilt on my bed needed mending.  It took me forever, hours, but I got it all done.

My favorite program of all, THE AMAZING RACE, is on now. So much of my adult life, at least 60- 65 years, was spent running through airports, trying to make connections, finding other planes when the flight my tickets were for cancelled or very delayed. Never knowing what to expect when I got off the plane. A nice hotel or a shitty motel.  Friendly faculty or hostile or simply uninterested. Lively students or a roomful of people on their phones while I perform. I remember some of the best places and some of the worst. Ohio State and Normal Illinois were two of the worst.  Chico California and Washington D.C. for the Folger Library were among the pleasantest. I got to handle a first folio there. My flying days and nights are done, but I still enjoy occasionally performing.

I planted lettuce and other greens too late this fall. I was anticipating a hot fall when it would stay too warm for fall crops until November, but the weather fooled me. It has been so far more like the falls we used to have. I should have started the lettuce in early September and the cole crops should have been started inside in late August. But who knew?