I was out in my garden yesterday, reading in the sun. I heard birds chirping and kids laughing. Then, at the end of the street, I heard the toot toot toot of a car horn. Then another. Soon, a line of cars passed by our house.
The cars moseyed down the neighborhood street, all in a row, at least 30 of them. They had their windows down, and people hung out the windows and sunroofs, waving and shaking pompoms, and the cars honked their horns and were all decked out with signs and balloons. I could not figure out what was going on.
Some of the cars had “We miss you ♥” painted on the windows. Then I saw one that said “Ms. ___ misses you,” and I realized: it was the town’s teachers.
I sat in my chair and cried. What a strange time we’re living in.
This is my entry for the daily Discover prompt: street.
I’ve spent the past five days in the open air. I am on my annual garden vacation. Instead of listening to news of the coronavirus, I’ve been outside in garden gloves and hat.
Over the past five years we’ve lived in our house, I’ve killed a lot of grass to create flower beds for butterflies. I’ve accumulated perennials over those years as well. In March, instead of the beds being barren and brown like they were when I first created them, green leaves and shoots emerge. They make me giddy every year. Green! Renewed life!
Each spring, I take a week off of work to spend in the garden, to get it ready for the birds and butterflies (and bunnies and deer). I move plants around to change things up year over year, and then spread about four tons of mulch over all the beds.
This week was that week for me. I finished spreading the mulch yesterday. With the lockdown in place, I’m grateful for five years of plant-buying. I don’t need to go to the nursery; I don’t have any big gaps to fill in, and I do have packets of zinnia and cosmos seeds for the places that do need filling.
Now I can sit back and watch it all grow.
Front Beds
Redbud budding
Rose and redbud bed (and herbs, lilac, silvery blue wormwoods, and artemesia)Dogwood budDogwood, butterfly bush, yarrow, and lavender already visible; butterfly attractors of milkweed, gallardia, salvia, liatris, and agastache, plus the delicious smelling lemon balm will come laterHostas emerging under the dogwood; lavender and dianthus at the foot of my chair; Karl Foerster grass shorn for new growth in right of frameThe bed in front of the stairs is a prairie type bed, with switchgrass, prairie dropseed grass, little bluestem grass, black eyed Susans, white coneflowers, liatris, sage, New England asters, calamint, Russian sage, and nepeta (catmint with blue flowers)
Back Hill
Rhododendrons in bloomLeftmost bed: grasses, agastaches, bee balm, rue, Joe Pye weed, nepeta, black eyed Susans, lollipop vervain Middle bed: wind dancer grass, echinacea, sedum, marjoram, scabiosa, indigo salvia Right bed: rue, Mexican feather grass, lamb’s ears, pink veronica, mums, Shasta daisies, blue gramma grass, little bluestem grass, milkweed, goldenrod, bee balmRain on sedumsSpicebush in bloomMy throne at the top of the hillHosta emerging; I caught it before the deer eat itBack bed and hammock treeBirdseed and rosemaryLate afternoon from the top of the hill
This is my entry for the Discover Open prompt. Also, if you like plants and butterflies and other gardeny stuff, I publish progress of this garden throughout the butterfly season at garden.andreabadgley.blog.
Today marks the 20th day the four of us have been in isolation at home. It feels like an eternity.
One way I’ve watched the progression of how seriously people are taking the coronavirus is through the lens of what is happening at my local grocery store. Because, you know, that’s the excitement these days, going to the grocery store.
On February 29, I first bought a few extra supplies — an extra bag of rice, a few boxes of mac and cheese, a small package of toilet paper. Nothing was amiss at the store. The coronavirus was in the news but Americans in general weren’t looking at it as a serious threat — not enough to make a run on groceries. The next week, March 7, was the same story. I bought a bigger bag of rice, a bigger package of toilet paper, a box of kitty litter, a carton of shelf-stable milk. The shelves were fully stocked; nobody seemed concerned.
When I shopped on March 13, after the NBA canceled the rest of the season, March Madness was called off, Disney was talking about closing, and we began self-isolation because someone we had contact with was awaiting a COVID-19 test result, I had a feeling I’d see a difference at Kroger. The paper products aisle was completely empty. The beans and rice were cleaned out. There was no rubbing alcohol, no shelf-stable milk.
But it was this last trip, on March 28, where I saw the starkest difference. When I entered the store, an employee wearing gloves and a mask stood ready with a fleet of shopping carts. “Large or small cart?” he asked, then disinfected the handle of my large cart. Throughout the store, customers and staff wore masks and gloves. Many more shelves were empty (good thing I got peanut butter the previous week!). It was eerily quiet.
Now, we are in full-on lockdown. Until Monday, my husband and I ran limited errands: Kroger for groceries, the local co-op for bulk foods, the hardware store, the local nursery, curbside takeout once a week.On Monday March 30, Day 18 of our family isolation, our governor issued a state-wide Stay At Home Order effective until June 10.
JUNE 10!
My first thought was oh my god, that’s more than 8 weeks away, how will we survive, these past 3 weeks have already been eternal. Then I looked back through my journal to find the dates for those grocery trips and realized IT HASN’T EVEN BEEN 3 WEEKS. 😭. June 10 is 70 days away. We’ve now been at home 20.
The good news is that tension is low at our house. I bought ice cream and peanuts and chocolate syrup and melting chocolate and toaster strudels. Our daughter made caramel sauce. I made Ostara seed bread. We all have doors, and we use them. Miraculously, we’re all getting along, making jokes at one another’s expense, as we do. Dinner time is my favorite time of day, when we all open our doors and come out to see each other.
The kids aren’t stressed, even though they are aware of what’s going on. My husband and I are though. Our stress relief is fits of giggles at the dinner table. Dinner time is when the four of us argue amicably about really dumb stuff, like whether the tail of a cursive o comes off the top of the bottom (the top, duh) and make alliances based on who gets each others’ jokes. The other night my husband said something that sent me into tears of laughter. I recovered myself, wiped my tears, then remembered what he said and started laughing again. Then he started laughing and snorted the sip of bubbly water he had just taken. I have never seen him laugh so hard he nearly lost his beverage through his nose.
I suspect we’re a little delirious. But laughter is how we will survive.
One thing I’m enjoying with the pandemic is the creativity and dark humor that are coming out of it. Here are a few of my favorites:
I woke at 3:00 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Warm air air that smells like summer drifted through our open window. I have a whole week ahead of me, dedicated entirely to my garden. All I could think about was, Where will I begin? Cleaning out leaves? Pruning rose bushes? Spreading mulch? I was a seven-year-old on the night before Christmas. HOW CAN I SLEEP WHEN SO MUCH EXCITEMENT HAPPENS TOMORROW?
I padded into the kitchen in bare feet and drank a glass of milk, wishing it was just time to get up already. I wasn’t sleepy. I wanted to put my gardening clothes on and begin, but it was dark night out. Gah! Why can’t the sun just rise already?
Heritage Stone delivered my mulch yesterday. Two truckloads of six cubic yards each. A pile in our driveway for our front beds and a pile at the top of the hill for the back. Today is going to be glorious. Partly sunny and a high of 82 degrees (28℃).
It’s a more reasonable hour than 3 o’clock now. It’s 6:42 am. I’ve fed the cats and emptied the dishwasher. I drink a kale smoothie and listen to birds wake. The sky is an inky blue now instead of black. Writing this passed some time. As soon as it’s light enough, I’m going out.
I ran yesterday between appointments at work. I needed to get outside. I needed exercise.
When I returned home, I walked through my garden, as I always do in spring when I come home from a run. The only plant in bloom in my garden is the forsythia, but as I looked around, I saw the mint is coming up again. The lavender kept its leaves through the winter. So did the rosemary, and the sage.
I thought about people buying bouquets at Kroger to perk themselves up in this time of self-isolation. I also thought about advice a friend in customer support gives, to keep a self-care kit by your computer when working in support. What struck me about her advice is that the kit should have something for each of your senses, so that when the work gets hard, you can go to the kit to pull yourself into your body with touch, taste, sound, smell, and sight.
I found a jelly jar in the pantry and grabbed the snippers from the garage, and I made myself a self-care bouquet of mint, sage, lavender, rosemary, and forsythia blossoms. The yellow blooms are a joyful contrast against my home office’s sky blue walls. When I need a zing of the outdoors, I rub my fingers on the mint to release its invigorating scent; when I need to be soothed I rub the lavender. When I want to get hungry, it’s the rosemary’s turn. And when I want something pretty, I just look at the bouquet.
I got a text yesterday afternoon at 2:06 pm in our family group chat:
Schools closed rest of year.
It knocked the breath out of me. We had guessed this would happen, but the governor announcing it 5 minutes into his briefing made it real. Even though abstractly we figured the kids wouldn’t be going back to school, once it was official, I really thought about what this would mean.
Five more months. Five more months of all of us at home. That’s assuming schools start back up in August as normal. Given that only two countries so far have actually seen their COVID-19 curves begin to flatten after a sharp rise (China and S. Korea), with that easing beginning after 8-10 weeks of lockdown, and given that other countries who halted it quickly and are now opening things back up are seeing surges in cases again, let’s just say we’ll see about August.
A friend recommended the book The Obstacle is the Way for guidance on coping. From what I understand, the gist of the book is that what matters most is how we choose to react to adversity: to focus on the things we can control rather than freaking out or lamenting the things we cannot. I’m going to read a few pages to ground myself before starting my workday.
Butterfly Mind 