Endless Summer

So for some of us lucky ones who aren't struggling with unemployment or home schooling, 2020 has turned into the year of Endless Summer. (Note: This is also the title of my all-time favorite Beach Boy's album, dealing with the same archetypical idea). 

We always used to dream of this back when we were kids; no getting up and going to school or work, weekdays running into weekends then back into weekdays again without skipping a beat, and long, long days when anything you didn't finish today just got moved to tomorrow's agenda.  

Even the revolution of the planet is cooperating at this point, yesterday I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to find it was already getting light, and last night it was still dusky after 9 p.m. So the White Nights of summer are on their way, too.

I have to admit that in my childhood dreams of Endless Summer there were more hamburger stands and beaches open. There were parties to attend, clothes to be bought, and new haircuts to try out, too.

But other than that, yes, this is Endless Summer. Sure, it's actually still spring, but I'm hoping we can get away with just renaming it Early, Early Summer. It seems appropriate that once the weeks start blending into one we may as well just throw in the seasons along with it and call it our endless summer vacation. 

So Early, Early Summer is currently in all its glory in our parts, and once again I'm stunned by the vibrancy of color that comes out of my garden. I didn't plant all of these plants, but I'm willing to take credit for the difference proper fertilizing, pruning and mulching can make in a landscape. 

As I mentioned, we planted a tree out back the other day, a Dogwood called "Cherokee Brave." And while it is something of a commemorative tree for this current time, it's also a practical planting, because a good shade tree is key to Endless Summer, too: A place to sit with some iced tea and a garden journal on a hot afternoon, or maybe even a strong Cosmopolitan and a bad novel a little later on in the day. Or reverse the order and have your cosmo at 10:00 am. Because Endless Summer, you know?

The vegetables are all up and growing madly, the way they do in Oregon once it stops raining every day. Honestly, I've never grown plants in a place so amenable to the plants themselves. Stand still long enough and some mystery vine or grass will begin covering your feet. It's inspiring and also scary at times, how well things grow here. 

I'm currently having way too many virtual Happy Hours with friends. But in Endless Summer, if you're over 21, there must be libations and friendships both new and old. There's a lot of things I'm going to worry about "once this whole thing is over" (favorite phrase of Planet Earth right now). Things like my waistline, my alcohol consumption, and my master-level ability to put things off until another day. 

But I think, for now, I'm just going to be thankful I'm here to enjoy Endless Summer. I don't know what the future holds, but for now it's good in our home, where there is more boredom than worry, and more anxiousness to get out and about than fear of going out and getting sick.

Gotta take your Endless Summer wins where you find them.

Screen Shots

In case anyone is wondering, if you click on any of my personal photos here within my posts, you will see they will come up as screen shots, and have for the last few months. 

This is not because the photos are not mine, but rather that Google, who hosts Blogspot sites, will no longer interface with iphoto files on my computer. So in order to upload them to a post, I have to screen shot them off iphoto to my desktop, then upload those screen shots to whatever post I'm putting them on. 

I saw some kerfuffle on another blog where someone's screen shot photos were suspected of not being genuine, and I get why. 

I hope Blogger sorts this issue out, as I've seen quite a few photo blogs I used to follow get abandoned over the last several months, and I'm wondering if this is the reason why. Unless it's easy for you to screenshot your photos, this new lack of interface would make uploading anything irritatingly multi-step and time consuming.

Anyway, just wanted to clear that up in case anyone is wondering. 

Occasionally I will also screen grab for other things I've written, but I assume if you see a screenshot of the President or photo of the world from space, you probably already know I did not take it.

Hope that clarifies the issue, just in case there's anyone wondering. 

Groundhog Day

Apple blossoms!

We are now past the 30-day mark for quarantining, and Big Ag jokes each morning that it's Groundhog Day again. The days do kind of blend each other, and the weeks even more so. This has positives and negatives, like anything else. 

There are times when quarantining around the house and yard feels peaceful, safe and very insular. And there are times when it drives me nuts and I feel I have GOT to get out and just see some other landscape, some other horizon than the one in our own yard and the street we exercise on (like pet hamsters on their wheel). 

That's usually when I head to the grocery store an hour south of here (in a county with far less COVID cases than the one I live in) or to the home improvement store for things we need. We go out a lot less than we used to; back before COVID ( Before COVID --BC?) I hit the grocery store a couple of times a week and it seems like we always were in Lowe's or Home Depot on weekends. 

Our new Cherokee Brave dogwood we found on a trip to Home Depot. Brave seems to be the goal for this season so it seemed appropriate.

Now the grocery store run happens every three weeks -- and the Lowe's or Home Depot run, once a month or so. Especially since they reduced their hours, which makes the stores much more crowded during the hours they are open.

But I've never come back from one of those trips feeling any better psychologically; in fact I generally feel worse. It's a combination of things: 

     First, the number of people who refuse to wear masks or socially distance is appalling and kind of makes me lose my faith in humanity. 

     Second, there's the disappointment when the store is out of something I need or want and I know I can't/won't come back tomorrow to see if they have it. (Although it's been fun to experiment with substitutions. And by fun, I mean 90 percent epic failure.) 

     And third, it's hard because of the tangible tension between people. You can't smile at someone when you're wearing a mask. And you can't leisurely shop when you know lingering makes you more vulnerable to a virus. 

Virtual Seder a couple of weeks ago.

Zoom and FaceTime have been godsends, because they allow us to see friends for virtual dinners or cocktail hours sans masks or any danger of contagion. Sure, it's not as good as being in person, but as we have many friends and family all over the world, it's allowed us to see people we might not normally see as much.  

There are other things that always make me feel good, on a daily basis. Starting seeds and transplanting them into the garden has been very rewarding. I've got tomato starts, baby lupines, more snap peas, plus summer cukes and zukes in my mini-greenhouse on a heated mat, and plenty of stuff already out in the garden, growing like gangbusters. My asparagus, strawberry plants, broccoli, onions, spinach and peas are already looking great.

Flowers are starting to bloom all over the property now: azaleas, forsythia, candytuft, daphne, plus apple, cherry and pear blossoms. By the way, is there any worse smell than pear blossoms, other than maybe a baby's diaper? No, I don't think there is. But I'll put up with pear blossom smell to get pears, any day.

Some new color in front of Big Ag's shop.

I'm hoping COVID cases begin to level off in the next month or two to a point where we can begin emerging  from our burrows a little more often, like sleepy, slightly shy...wait for it...groundhogs. Yes, we are the groundhogs, and these are our days -- until the time comes when we can go fully topside again, we organize our nests, we secure our food supply, and we occasionally scurry out in search of stuff we need. 

Wishing everyone some happy groundhog days, and some fruitful scurrying. 

"Essential" in the changing world

Essential.

This is one of those moments when the universe re-shuffles the deck and when everything that comes back down will be in a slightly different place than it was in The Time Before. Pre-pandemic, if you will. 

How different remains to be seen. If you've lived long enough, you've probably experienced this kind of thing in a local or regional way, say, after an earthquake. Or even a national way, like after 9/11. 

But this is the first time (in my lifetime, anyway) when the reshuffling involved almost every human inhabitant of the planet. 

In the midst of it all, the word "essential" has taken on a whole new meaning, hasn't it? Who is essential these days? Certainly not the same people who thought of themselves as essential in 2019. I'm looking at you, life coaches, social influencers, talent management agents and nail salon operators. 

My husband is essential (and not just to me). He's in agriculture, and if there's one thing I'm sure we can all agree on, it's that food is a good thing to have around, especially during re-shuffling times. 

Right now, he goes out and checks on the fields once a week or so, driving around alone in his truck. But mostly each morning he eats breakfast with me, kisses me goodbye, and then heads upstairs to his home office where he does all the fertilizer requests, leases, insurance, legal stuff, and personnel issues that arise from growing a lot of food at once.

The people we always gave scant, polite "thank you for being a helper" lip service to in the past -- nurses, respiratory therapists, and hospital check-in clerks, are now regularly saving our lives, just as they always have been -- we just failed to appreciate them much until now. Along with grocery store clerks, pharmacists, the garbage truck men, and mail carriers (ours was just diagnosed with COVID and is down for the count, so we are praying for her).

There's also the people who still have to come to your house and fix stuff, no matter what's going on, like plumbers. (Social distancing everyone! No congregating around the clogged up sink!) If you think re-shuffling is hard now, trying attempting it with no hot water or a backed up septic line.

Who is essential in the retail world? Not Ashley Furniture, not Hobby Lobby (they'd argue against that though wouldn't they?), or your local gift shop. No, in a strange turn of events, it will be the much-loathed, behemoth big-box stores -- which oddly enough are the great-grandchildren of the old rural general stores -- that will make it, because a long time ago they decided to sell groceries along with dry goods, generators, underwear, garden plants, mattresses, and dishes. So WalMart, Costco and Fred Meyer get a pass, no matter how you feel about them personally. The local economy we so adored and touted -- the nail salons, pricey little boutiques and comic book stores, it turns out, were only considered essential in ideal circumstances, economically-speaking.

Also completely essential are the IT/computer types, who hold in their hands our ability to stay in touch with those we love, and those we do business with. How can we ever thank them enough for that, as we go through this? 

Without virtual cocktail hours, I'd be drinking with my chickens. 

But I kind of hope at the end of this we have a resurgence in kids wanting to go into medicine or study agriculture; that there's a generation of youngsters sitting and watching these heroes on the nightly news and that they're going to ask their parents for an anatomy book from Amazon, or a six pack of strawberry plants the next time they're at Fred Meyer. 

Or maybe they'll find trades for themselves that will always be necessary, like plumbers and electricians, once they see their Life Coach parents try and get unemployment for what we strangely, have always been able to live without (and just never thought about enough to realize it). 

Frankly I'd just be happy if everyone wanted to get out into their gardens and grow some of their own food, play their own music or make some art. There are a lot of both essential and non-essential life skills that we all may be learning to do for ourselves in the next few years as this pandemic waxes and wanes, and anything that makes you more self-sufficient, and beyond that, just happy, is a good and useful thing.

Pandemic Playlist

These days old songs rise to the top of my consciousness, unbidden. Music has always factored heavily into my life, as a soundtrack, as a comfort, and as a statement of the times.

Here's what I'm listening to these days. 

1. Life During Wartime -- Talking Heads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLwZvg46jms

2.  Too Much Time On My Hands -- Styx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs

3.  Keep Yourself Alive -- Queen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JofwEB9g1zg

4. Nothing but Flowers -- Talking Heads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2twY8YQYDBE

5. Nobody Told Me (there'd be days like these) -- John Lennon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuuhsqA95iA

6. The Best of Times -- Styx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fzJGxpcenc

7. It's The End of The World As We Know It -- REM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY


Got any end of the world favorites? Might be time to dust 'em off and put 'em on whatever you're using to hear music these days. 

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.