Zucchinis and Mosquitos

I had a very frustrating time with a woman who runs a program series on PBS.  I’ve been filmed a number of times for various poetry programs and had never before had trouble doing so. This time, an appointment would be set up to discuss the program, put off, put off again, emails querying times not answered, the idea of discussing the program finally cancelled.  Then she explained a bit about the program and I watched an episode.  It turned out she was not interested in filming me reading my work, but wanted me to discuss a couple of poems by other writers and something to do with fungi, a type of organism I know little about.

I am not a fan of criticism.  I never voluntarily have read critics since graduate school.  I generally pay little attention to my own reviews.  I think talking heads are boring.  I would never willingly watch a program of people ‘discussing’ poems.  I want people to experience poems, not dissect them.  So, I pulled out.

But the whole episodes was frustrating in the extreme and wasted a lot of time.  It also interfered with my other appointments as the time for getting together and the time for filming kept changing.

We are humid, very warm and humid.  The mosquitoes swarms us when we venture out the door. Even getting to the car is a battle.  And they get into the car and bite us as we drive. Friday I had a long, very long, appointment at Ophthalmic consultants of Boston at their Yarmouth Cape Cod offices.  One reason the appointments there are so long is the huge amount of time you spend waiting and waiting and waiting.  I have to go there because of my glaucoma.

The pollinator garden is finally working and the bees are getting to pollinate our vegetables. We are suddenly deluged with zucchini, patty pans, lesser so from the yellow squash. The first Oriental eggplants are on their way – probably by Sunday? The Italian eggplants are always slower and fussier about weather. I have to pull the old arugula and plant new seeds, but the mosquitoes have me reluctant to go out into my garden.  Even when I wake in the mornings, I find new bites from during the night.  It’s been so many years without mosquitoes, that my body is quite sensitive to the bites. It’s almost impossible to work in the garden because of the heat, humidity and mosquitoes.  It knocks me out very fast. It’s so ticky, yu feel yu need a shower after five minutes.

After a time of only reading poetry manuscripts, I am finally back to reading for pleasure and curiosity.  I’m about to start Neil Gaiman’s 2nd collection fo short stories, once I finish a nonfiction book, The Wheel of Time about Neolithic people’s monuments and beliefs and how they have created our current holidays.

We are losing the battle of the bugs.  Not just mosquitoes, but flies, beetles, ants –we’re under attack.  The resident spiders can’t keep up.  I’ve had two cats who would go after mosquitoes when I was trying to sleep, Colette and Xena, both big females who chose to guard me.

Tash, her mother Stephanie and her sister are coming to supper tonight.  The sister doesn’t eat meat, so I’ll be cooking shrimp. I am very achy from the appointment yesterday.  Because I’m now very small and have epicanthic folds, they have trouble doing some of the tests and get frustrated and begin to handle me roughly. I’ve come home with bruises.  I couldn’t sleep last night because my head as clogged up by the drops they put in and I ached from the machines.