Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Saturday, Arpil 11th, 2020

Easter Prep

Finally, the wind has abated. Turned out to be a rather pleasant day affording me some time with Isabel Allende on the love seat in the garden enjoying the sun, even if it was a little chilly. The excitement of the day was a trip to Harris Teeter where I found fresh Rhubarb and Kohlrabi! As a result, I will spend tomorrow making Rhubarb marmalade which will feature among the Christmas gifts.

My brilliant friend asked if I might want to join a virtual Suburi class. Hell yes, I did. Any martial art exercise is welcome at this stage of sequestering. Doing some weapons work seemed like a great idea. Sadly, he never managed to share the Google Hangout link, so it never happened. I send a rather angry text asking, why he would ask me to join and then not send the link. Am I out of line to be peeved? Thankfully, the Turkish Sensei I like regularly posts Aikido weapons work which I follow and try to copy in my front yard. I have gotten odd looks from my neighbors I must say. They do not appear overly impressed by me wielding a wooden sword. I do enjoy the rhythm of the movement though, so they are welcome to meander past our house and think me crazy.

Other than that we had a lovely afternoon preparing for Easter tomorrow. The girls set up a Zoom meeting to color and decorate eggs. We boiled twenty eggs which I will distribute in the front garden for the kids of the Hood to hunt in the morrow. After all, there is a limit to the number of eggs any one of us can eat in a day. The coloring is what really is fun.

I have hidden eggs all over the house so my teen will have some fun in the morning. I have not done this for the past five or so years as we have been traveling over Easter. It will be interesting to see if she finds them all. If not, I suspect we shall be tripping over eggs well into Christmas.

I still haven’t managed to catch any of the voles, though they have ceased digging up my garden, so maybe they really have been drowned in the flood of repellent I threw at them.

Today we have also planted the pansyshades we picked up from one of our neighbors. Let’s see if they fare any better than our rescues, which do look a bit dry. Apparently winter is to return on Wednesday, so I will hold off on my plan to put out seed for dill, parsley, and cress until next weekend.

Things on the Corona front are still bleak. We remain in lockdown with reported infections now at close to 1.8 million worldwide and deaths exceeding 100k. The US is now trying to identify undetected cases.  Testing is still at low levels, with only 1.6 people per every thousand getting tested. This is disconcerting.

There are however some upsides of lockdown.

I am impressed by South Africa, where the government is taking a three month pay cut for the greater common good.  I have a hard time imagining this happening in the USA.