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what a fabulous weekend it's been! the weather is just too perfect. the last couple nights i've been taking bike rides at like 8pm--in a t-shirt!

the garden is pretty much all planted as of sunday. we planted a bunch more peas, carrots, spinach, lettuce, and some cucumbers, pumpkins, dill, parsley, rosemary, cilantro, pomegranite, blueberry, three tomato plants, and a whole ton of flowers. still waiting to go in are eggplant, basil, lavender, bell peppers, and a few more flowers.

i got word tonight that i won second place in the sigma tau delta poetry contest! for a poem called "patina." there's a $200 prize that i'm pretty psyched about, and i think i might have to read the poem aloud at some function.

i really needed something to build my poetry confidence a bit...so much of the stuff i've been writing lately is crap, and i'm just so ready to give up. the one i turned in for this week is absolutely awful.

one of the worst things about this semester is that i've really started to doubt myself in even being able to judge which of my pieces are crap and which aren't. typically if i come to workshop thinking what i've written is terrible the whole class likes it, and if i have the tiniest bit of confidence that what i've written is good everyone hates it. i'm starting to experience some hostility in comments because no one gets most of my poetry, which is fine i guess, but it's sort of pointless to bring those poems to workshop because i don't get much valuable feedback for revision.

i'd love to finish the semester strong and turn in a couple poems that i'm proud of...maybe this will give me the oomph i needed to do that.