But Still... in Everyday Ramblings

The dianthus in my garden plot. It is about three times bigger now that it wintered over. I understand (from the Chelsea Flower Show coverage on Brit Box) that it is super easy to take cuttings from. Maybe next weekend when I can get into Fred during the day and get some peat free potting soil and seed trays.

We have been having big winds. The two gift tomatoes survived but today I did major surgery on one to get it in a cage. It has time to settle down and stabilize before it starts flowering and fruiting, but it was not a pretty operation.

Walt decided a week or so ago that we were going to have the poets in our book group read their own work to each other. I think the inspiration was that one of the younger guys won the PEN American Poetry in the Prisons award last year. It is a big deal. (He also read Hamlet during our Shakespeare birthday group reading in April and was very good.)

He is out of prison now. It turns out he was a journalist before he first got addicted to pain killers and then street drugs and ended up in prison for 5 years. He is clean and has been writing since he got clean and does proof reading as a day job. In the fall he is going for his MFA in poetry. He lives now in Missouri but was in prison here in Oregon. He wants to teach in the prisons going forward.

Anyway, Walt invited him and me and four others, one Kim Stafford, the former poet laureate of Oregon and William Stafford’s son. Everybody but me and the award winner was either unavailable or doing something useful and good.

So, I thought it was just going to be Walt, me, and the award winner guy. Pretty casual. I didn’t practice reading or warm up my voice. When I did read, I could have read better. There were six other people on the call. Lovely, people I have gotten to know over the last year doing this book club thing.

It was great. Seriously, we had a lot of fun. There was another poet, a forest service ranger from California who also brought two poems. The award winner recited, he recited his four poems, I read four and our ranger read two and we all talked to each other. Walt was in rare form. I haven’t seen him so happy in months and he is an optimistic happy guy.

It would be kind of hard to describe the path the chatter took but we went from a childhood boat trip using chairs and blankets in the dining room and a snack of Jell-O to how would you describe to someone the arc of your life.

I read a couple of poems I haven’t looked at in years. That was a dip into the past for me, a few details I had forgotten. And some repeating themes it is only possible to see years later.

Walt is going to put my poems and the forest ranger’s poems up on the website… https://openroadpdx.com/ soon. Our award winner doesn’t want to share his outside the Bibliophiles group because one is being published and the others are out on submission. My poems are all from previously published chapbooks.

Mrs. Sherlock was supposed to have her stress test yesterday afternoon. They had her stop taking one of her meds 24 hours beforehand and she ended up having to go to Emergency again because she had an intense shortness of breath episode.

And then they canceled her test. One of the nurses was sick. They did bloodwork while she was in Emergency, and they ended up giving her a magnesium infusion and sent her home.

She has a cardiologist appointment for a week from Thursday and then the stress test is re-scheduled for after that. But still. Clearly something is going on. She goes to a different medical system than I do.

We are supposed to both start Push-Up club tomorrow. The first session is manageable. But still…

It is going to be quite hot today. Beautiful, a bit hazy but hot. Walking back from the garden this morning I was dragging my tail feathers behind me. I was thinking I should ask Kes what the experts were saying about the wild grasses this year. It is time for them, and I am affected.

Oh. The grass pollen count in the valley is the highest in recorded history. Eek.

We are not going to talk about wildfire risk later in the season, okay? Hello Climate Change, how you doing? Our constant companion these days.

I am grateful to have a low key day in the midst of it all.