Two More Raised Beds

This last weekend we installed two more large raised beds in the vegetable garden, which is great news on the food-growing front. We knew we were running against time in trying to get to Lowe's before things got really bad out there, virus-wise. One of our strategies was actually not to go first thing in the morning, as a lot of people have been doing, but instead going a half-hour before closing time.

At 9:30 pm, the home improvement store is an interesting place. Lacking the usual hustle and bustle of daytime hours, you have the aisles to yourselves. And strangely, the music changes, too, to dance mixes -- guess the kids on night shift get to pick the store's P.A. music. This leaves open the wonderful possibilities of mini-dance parties in the lighting or hardware aisles (done it; the lighting aisle is the most fun).

 But of course we're not (only) there to dance, we're also there to get building supplies and seeds.Our food growing capacity has never been more important to us, especially if we want to stay the hell out of the produce section at the store. We're hoping that maybe by May, we'll be coming into enough peas, broccoli, cilantro and lettuce in our back pasture to keep our menus varied enough that there won't be Black Friday-style fights over fresh produce between Big Ag and I as we stay in lockdown together.

That's actually a joke; there is no one else I'd rather be in quarantine with. You can certainly tell the strength of a marriage during difficult times with lots of togetherness. We might bicker like crazy driving around Portland on a plain old Saturday afternoon, but when we're both stuck at home and faced with each others' company 24/7, we actually do really well. 

I have scheduled two virtual cocktail hours with friends, and that's been fun. FaceTime has never been more needed!

Hope your isolation has been easy and your quarantinis are being served cold with plenty of olives. 

Projects and pursuits

Scored some new insulators BC (before Covid). Had plenty of time to put them up AL (After Lockdown).

I don't know if any of you feel this way, but I have good days and bad days right now. Yesterday, for example, I was depressed. These times are difficult in a way that closely resembles grief, and I do seem to bounce between denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance, sometimes on a minute by minute basis. Kudos to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross for nailing that process all those years ago. It happens with the death of anything, from a loved one to a job to, in our case right now, an entire way of life. 

I felt this way after my dad died, so I know there's an adjustment period where the New Reality sinks down into all the levels of my consciousness, but since none of us has any idea how long this is all going to go on, the uncertainty is challenging as well.

But then I have other days when I wake up, am still aware of the situation, but feel good about my little world, even if I don't feel the same about the world-at-large in general right now.

Mother Nature apologized for last weekend's snow by sending us warm, sunny days this week. Big Ag is working from home -- although I am having a bit of trouble getting him to not "run into the office for just one thing" and then staying there all afternoon long, pretending it's still business as usual. He's doing better lately, but again, it's an adjustment for us all.

Our escape day to the coast. Seven mile hike. 

These beautiful yellow lilies are blooming all over Oregon, anyplace near water.

Social Distancing, en extremis. 

We took off one day last week and went hiking, up to Cascade Head trail on the coast. It was a wonderful day, filled with very few people, and a whole lot of nature. What an antidote for an anxious soul. Nice to know that those things will all still be with us, no matter what this COVID crisis brings. 

New rhubarb coming in bigly. 

With spring also comes planting and growing, and so we've been busy planting seeds and even picked up a few transplants for immediate planting. I figure the sooner we can have food in the garden for ourselves, the less we have to visit the supermarket, which lately has been filled with worried, anxious people (including myself). So the usual pleasure I'd get from shopping for the week's groceries is no more, for the time being. These days you just want to get in, get out and get the hell home. 

CA Olallieberries seem comfortable here.

We planted four kinds of blueberries; we'll see what we like.

Before things got bad, I was doing some landscaping work, and so have some lovely new daphne plants, some forsythia, candytuft and other ornamental beauties, which should be blooming later in the year. Maybe I'll post of pics of those soon. Got to remember the importance of what soothes the eyes as well as the stomach.

Hope you and yours are well in the midst of this new reality. Remember, if you are an introverted gardener and food grower, you have literally been preparing for this for years.

 You've got this. 

This ain't no party

If you were one of those people I was making fun of last week for still having your snow tires on, I salute you and bow down before your superior wisdom. 

Things get weird quickly sometimes, don't they?  Most of us now find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic we never even considered when we were toasting the New Year in just a few months ago.

Here in Oregon, the Governor decided to close all the schools in the state for the rest of the month at about the exact same time the White House officially called the pandemic a national emergency. 

And just like that, people started hitting the stores (even more than they had already been) and throwing items into their cart like it was the end of the world. I should know. I went out to do my weekly shopping today and, unfortunately, ran into panicked hordes of families buying five of anything they could get their hands on.

There was one woman running down the aisle with four giant packages of toilet paper and, I kid you not, at least 10 gallons of ice cream. Priorities. When I was at the feed store I watched a guy almost get wrestled to the ground after attempting to steal the cashier's large bottle of hand sanitizer, which she had sitting next to the register. It's probably a bad idea to try and steal anything from a rural tack and feed store, where at least 50 percent of the staff and shoppers are open carrying. But I guess panic beats reason these days.

On the way home, it snowed. And the freak March snow was by far the most normal part of the day.

So I guess, as the COVID cases in our area increase every day, the time has arrived to hunker down and be at home a LOT more. Other than the supermarket, almost everything is closed now anyway, so I'm not sure where we'd go even if we wanted to. I'm thankful we have a great state parks system and miles of coastline where one can walk without running into a soul -- we'll definitely be doing a fair amount of that in the next month or two. 

Big Ag and I went out to a really nice restaurant last weekend, fully aware that it was probably the last time we'd be doing that for awhile. 

Thankfully, we're on two acres, and so at least we have the advantage of being able to step outside, walk around the property, and breath deeply. I feel bad for the urbanites all over the world who maybe, if they are lucky, have a balcony to stand on to get some fresh air, but not much else if they're being advised not to go out in the city. 

For us, it's almost time to start planting the vegetable garden, so seed germination, planting and weeding will be a welcome distraction from everything that's going on in the big, outside world.

These little tomatoes would rather not go outside right now. 

And The Met has decided to stream operas all this week online! Monday it will be "Carmen," and I think Wednesday is "La Boheme." So while you might have to look to find it, there will even be plenty of culture available, with nice people trying to make good TV and internet programming available to those cocooning in place.

I expect I'll be here at the blog a bit more often, as a lot of the outside world has closed off a bit. My plan is to do some writing, some planting, and of course, enjoy things like "Carmen" and some good library books while I wait this whole thing out (the actual physical library system in Oregon is closed indefinitely, but thankfully the Overdrive online portal remains open for now for our Kindles and other tablets/readers). 

Stay healthy out there, friends. I'll share some pictures of the garden this weekend once the snow has melted. And take it easy on the ice cream -- you can buy 10 gallons at a time, but where in heaven's name are you going to store it? (answer: in your belly.)