The day dawned with sunshine all around and now it’s cloudy. Apparently, we’re getting thunderstorms this afternoon. Darn it. I was all set to do some work outside. I did get out yesterday afternoon to clear some more garden beds. I have a long list of things to do out there. I’ll run outside after I post this to try to get some of it done before the rains come.
Then it will be puzzle time.
The flowering quince is in bloom.
And the lilac buds are coming along. Some sun would help! I can see the peony shoots coming out of the ground, as well. And the clematis is leafing out.
Spring – you’ve been very slow this year. You seem to be taking your own sweet time. I can’t wait to smell those lilacs!
I worked a lot on the puzzle yesterday. I started A Gentleman in Moscow. And what a sweet sigh of happiness it brings. It’s such a joy to read Amor Towle’s words again. I’m taking my time, savoring each and every page. Maybe I should just read it over and over until this pandemic is no more?
One of the vintage Penguins I ordered arrived yesterday – it took three weeks to get here from England – as well as a John Prine T-shirt that Don ordered, but both things are currently inside the red bench in the kitchen where all mail sits for 24 hours. It forces us to delay gratification. Let’s hope it’s character building.
We also had to order coffee directly from Peet’s because it was inevitably out of stock on our grocery orders and we couldn’t risk running out. That arrived via UPS late in the afternoon. We had to wipe it down, of course, and then wash and rewash our hands. I know it’s the new normal and most days, I’m fine with it. Yesterday was not one of those days.
Once again, we fell asleep while watching Cheers – that makes three nights in a row. Lately, it seems we can’t make it past 9:30 pm!
Stay safe. Stay home.
Happy Tuesday.
Good morning! I’ve been using a Clorox wipe to wipe down all my mail and packages and then open it. Then I wash my hands.
I fell asleep at about 9:30 last night, leaning against Brian while watching That 70’s Show. ;-)
Partly sunny here and very windy, making the temps feel like only 28 degrees. Waah! We have a lot of yard work to do, too.
xoxo
We’re low on Clorox wipes, so we save them for groceries. Mail isn’t urgent, so it can wait.
Rainy now. I went out and trimmed some wild roses/brambles but had to come in. Just as well. I’m not in gardening shape yet, so better to take it slowly. Stay safe1
Always look forward to seeing your flowering quince each spring. My mother-in-law had one outside her backdoor at the end of the patio that was just perfect. Tried several times to get a start from it to grow, but none ever made it.
Thanks for sharing!
It has been here for years, long before we moved in. I do love those vividly colored flowers! Stay safe, Chris.
It’s quite cold here today..,and windy. So we’re trying to decide if we will work outside today. We made a lot of progress, Saturday, Sunday, and yesterday, so we may take a break. After all, we are on safer at home orders til May 26, so we’ll have plenty of time. It’s nice to see all the sprouting on your bushes. You are probably a good 2 weeks ahead of us.
Enjoy your book, and your puzzle. Last night my cat decided the table was for him…and not for my puzzle. Go figure. Stay safe! ;)
Wind and pollen don’t work for me, so I no longer work outside if it’s windy. But I, too, have a lot to do outside and I couldn’t do it for a while because I wasn’t feeling well.
Naughty kitty! They just know where you don’t want them, right? Stay safe, Donnamae!
I feel the same way about A Gentleman in Moscow. I want to read it again, and I think I will get it on audible as well.
I wonder who the narrator is on Audible? Stay safe! 1
sorry to “eavesdrop”, but i looked up the answer … the audiobook of “a gentleman in moscow” is read by nicholas guy smith and 17 hours and 53 minutes long.
also, according to amazon, this book is “soon to be a major television series”. have you heard that before? if it’s true, i best get to reading it. :)
good night. and stay safe.
kathy in iowa
My response to that is ‘Oh no!” There is no way a television series can capture the complexity and beauty of Towle’s words. I won’t be watching it, when and if it happens. Because all bets are off now on series and movies and plays. xo
good point, claudia. thank you!
kathy in iowa
I have found re-reading favorites is a really good idea right now. That IS a favorite, for sure. Along with Rules of Civility. It takes me about 3x as long to read a new to me book now. I have a really hard time figuring out the relationships of the characters as I get into it. Sometimes I have to resort to reading paragraphs out loud to regain some focus. It is crazy.
As Donnamae said, it is quite chilly and SO windy out there today. The “feel like temp” is only about 38*. It is sunny, though. Tomorrow they said 65* possibly! We got the Hydrangea pruned yesterday. We do have time to get the rest done. Our HS FFA is having a plant sale in May & we got the info yesterday. I plan to do an order with them for pick up, We order May 1 and go get the plants through a drive-thru process about May 8. Have to get our order in early. Figure it is for a good cause!!
Take care, kiddo. Stay out of the wind if possible and enjoy the book!!
Good way to get some plants, Chris! I’m back inside after the rain starting sooner than I had planned for. Just finished lunch and am ready for a nap! I’m not in gardening shape yet! Stay safe.
hej, chris k in wisconsin …
i do the same thing at work. i read something out loud (and sometimes more than once) if i need to focus and really get what i am looking at but not always thinking about. stupid depression and coronavirus.
you and claudia favoring “a gentleman in moscow” have made me determined to read it (starting this thursday, a day off). thanks for that.
hope you and your family are well and stay safe!
kathy in iowa
I am glad I am not the only one “reading aloud” to try and focus!! It does help, though.
Yes, both books were really good. I love his writing. Glad you have a day off coming soon.
Stay safe….. I would add stay home, but for you I know that isn’t possible.
hej, chris.
yes, it does help. i just need to make sure no one is around to hear me. :)
our governor has divided the state into six regions and each of them has a score from 0 to 10 (safest to worst) rated on number of cases, deaths, outbreaks, etc. she’s said if a region is at 10, there will be no more meeting in groups up to ten people like they can now (why is that still allowed?!?) … only the people you live with and – as she says a lot – “dialing down” in other ways. that started in northeast iowa last week. if we go to a 10 here, then my boss might shut things down. the region i am in is at a 9 (same with the one east of here). nearly 500 cases were confirmed in iowa during the past 24 hours so will see.
anyway, thanks for your wishes. hope you and your family are well. stay safe!
kathy in iowa
I have a book and some needle felting roving in quarantine in the garage for the day and groceries will arrive tomorrow. You’re right — it’s the anticipation!
But it’s such fun to see a package arrive and know that soon it will be open and loved! Like your beautiful blooms — who couldn’t help but love every single one of those! I’m still in the daffodil and hyacinth mode.
Enjoy and savor!
Yes! Around 4 pm, we’ll pull the mail out of the red bench and we’ll open it! Meanwhile, we’ll stick today’s mail in there for its 24 hour quarantine.
My hyacinths didn’t come up this year! I don’t know why!
Stay safe, Jeanie.
I just love those quince blossoms! Do they ever get fruit, or just the blossoms?
Yes, I’ve seen the fruit in there. It’s such a thorny bush that I don’t dare try and retrieve it! Stay safe, Shanna!
Oh such beautiful pictures today! Spring has been slow here in SE Wisconsin as well, but we managed to get a load of mulch spread around the property. While we won’t be able to plant new things due to the nurseries being closed, at least the new mulch (we redo it about every 3 years) makes everything look new and fresh.
I’ve always been a maker, as crafters refer to themselves now. That said, I have had the darndest time finding something to hold my interest this past month of sheltering. Knitting is out for now because it makes the osteoarthritis in my thumb of my left hand really act up. After faffing around in my craft room for several days beginning and rejecting several projects, I realized that I have lots of really beautiful fabric I haven’t touched in years. So I hauled out my sewing machine, I think last used about 5 years ago, and began to make a mask for myself. I used the NY Times pattern with the tightly-woven quilters cotton they recommend. Then I made one for my husband. Now I’m ready to make them for the whole family and any interested friends. Hooray, I have a purpose again for my creativity.
Take care and take heart – spring IS coming.
Kay
So happy to hear that, Kay! Creative and fills a definite need. Good for you! Stay safe.
We leave packaged goods that we won’t use immediately in a separate box for 2-3 days before putting in storage. Packaged goods used more immediately we spray down with isopropyl alcohol. And leave to dry. We wash produce with a drop of dish detergent and rinse really well. We use the rinse water in our garden. California won’t enjoy as much water as in previous decades and I fear it will only get worse.
Enjoy book, puzzle and coffee after some outdoor chores, Claudia. The Peet’s headquarters is in the business park a mile or so from my house. Sometimes I can smell the beans roasting. All the Starbuck’s in town closed, but the Peet’s shop is taking orders from and bringing orders to the front door. I have my stash of Peet’s coffee, a bag ground for my French press and a bag for my espresso maker, so I don’t need to venture downtown.
Everywhere I go, I see differing advice about packages, food supplies etc. In the end, I think it’s just common sense. The CDC said you don’t need to use soap and water for vegetables, just water. But who knows in the end? The chances of getting the virus from paper or cardboard is extremely rare. I think we all have to do what our instincts tell us to do.
Lucky you, to smell those coffee beans roasting! This is the first time we’ve ordered directly from Peet’s. We may have to do it again, depending on how long this goes on.
Stay safe, Wendy.
Yeah, I’m feeling weary over the conflicting advice. We had a real meltdown in this house when my husband accidently put disinfected grocery items back into the same bags they’d been packed in from the store (in order to haul everything in from the garage ‘disinfecting station’), i.e. the interior of the bags would have had the virus cooties (where the stuff had been before it was disinfected), so we went back & forth on that, with my husband saying the disinfected items would have been self-protected back into the original bags. I mean, this is a nuts-crazy life and it is not worth an argument with my husband (over fear). Now, of course (this was over two weeks ago), we don’t bring in the shopping bags at all (they’d been disinfected on the outside, not the inside; I am probably making no sense; who knows what to do anyway!).
I did wash with sudsy water, the bananas in their peel; the avocados in their thick hide. Same as I do for cantaloupes. We let onions sit for three or four days before touching them. I’ll wash celery, carrots and a head of cabbage in plain water today. I’ll then peel off the outer leaves of the cabbage and ‘skin’ the carrots/celery as much as I can, then plunge everything in water again for a second rinse. I don’t know what I’m doing with the tomatoes yet. For now, they’ve just been sitting on a plate I’ll wash. Since I’m still leery of eating anything raw right now (I probably don’t need to be, but I am; early on, I took to heart what a noted virologist said on TV, to cook EVERYthing to be safe), I’ll prep to either roast the carrots in a sheet pan (the roasted veggies are terrific as a filler for a tortilla wrap [we sorta ‘live’ on tortillas here in SoCalif!]), dice up the celery to freeze for casseroles/mirapoix; yet I might take a chance and eat the inner part of the cabbage head raw (put the rest in a soup). I don’t know what to do either! Just winging it. I’d rather have a head of lettuce than these sacks of torn/prewashed lettuces (the virologist said they’re safer) which don’t last as long. Before we pull a potato to bake, I do dunk it in a slightly-sudsy wash; rinse it; then scrub the peel like I usually do because, even pre-Covid, potatoes, unless they’re organic, have always been a high-pesticide vegetable. I do know of some people who use a vinegar wash/rinse on their fresh veggies right now.
I opened up the home page this afternoon, scanned a few articles and just put it all to bed; I can’t take another headline. I’m just really at my limit today on world news and national news. Sad to read that many major department stores probably won’t make it in this economic disaster. I know of two small manufacturers (very small; manufacturer probably isn’t the right word) where they’ve been able to convert their product line temporarily (one, who’d made children’s clothes, is now making designer fabric masks; a second, who’d made doll clothes, is now also making masks for the public [in both instances, nobody’s buying their original product, they had the fabric inventory; there was a NYC fashion designer who did this early on {masks & other PPE like gowns}]). They have the flexibility a big department store just doesn’t (I guess; I’m not well-informed on the subject).
I think we can all start listing in our heads a number of small businesses we’re wondering will survive. I don’t get out to see, but the last time we drove down our already-struggling Main Street a couple of weeks ago, most everything was closed up…and to add insult to injury, some of these shuttered shops, whose inventory is still visible thru their windows, are now falling victim to smash & grab robberies. (My husband feels the reason that hasn’t been widely reported is that they don’t want to give any other crooks any ideas; but, again, who knows; I think law enforcement is likely wrapped up in so many/too many urgent, emergency situations with the epidemic, spread very thin out there.)
I get very annoyed with a neighbor who doesn’t practice physical distancing (too many visitors to the home) but, at the moment, they’re rigging up a canopy with bunting and streamers, balloons and fairy lights, so I imagine it’s an evening party for one of the kids. I’ll hope & pray it’s just their own immediate household/family in attendance. But, in the meantime, the colorful decorations fluttering in the breeze is so pretty and cheery for the children, so I’ll go with it. Enjoying that, and the lovely photo today of your flowering quince. The word ‘quince’ always makes me feel happy because I remember my long-deceased/beloved auntie who’d harvest quince and make the most delish quince jelly which I still just crave on toast.
Very basic, duh … but I was thinking last night of how things were different in my aunts’, grandparents’, parents’ time. Going ‘way back (again) to turn-of-the-century era or the world wars and Great Depression; when they had to ‘make do’. I continue to be fascinated with the subject. How if they wanted something, they had to make it happen. No ‘dialing up’ Instacart or an Imperfect Foods box for delivery. Hungry for dinner and the pantry is bare? Hook a line, go to the beach pier and catch a ocean fish. Go dig in the garden and gather some carrots and pluck a tomato off the vine. Want quince jelly on toast? Go pick the fruit and cook it up on the stovetop. Need a new apron? Make one from this flour sack. Dirty clothes? Haul up some water from the creek, get the cauldrons boiling with your homemade soap, scrub and pound away on creek boulders or maybe lucky to have an old washboard, hang out the rinsed clothes on a line in the breeze & the sun; and then, oh goody, to iron all that wrinkled cotton with the heavy iron heating up on the old woodstove (heard one aunt speak of this whole routine, and my dad said those irons were hot & heavy [I bet they had carpal tunnel problems with their wrists/hands after this!]; was like 1930 out in the country). They were so self-sufficient but they knew nothing diff; it’s how it had to be. I look around at some of my dwindling supplies in the house and wish I had even a tenth of their creativity! I understand my grandma could make a terrific dessert pie…with crackers. I think it was called Mock Apple Pie. Ritz crax.
My husband and I sat down and had another one of those long talks last night as to what’s newest in the projections relative to all aspect of the virus and what’s happening in the country. It helps center and settle me down when we assess and then update our planning on how we’ll keep living thru (months/over a year of) this epidemic. My husband feels very strongly that it’s not a time to plan too much into the future. He’s very good about living day to day; I’m not. I’ve gotta go out much further than the day to feel like I have a direction. This came on the heels of expanding positive-Covid cases in our own hometown, which of course were expected, but I guess you saw the report/study coming out of L.A. of how we’re infected even more than could be imagined, like 55 times more in the percentages. On a lighter note, my husband has finally agreed to let me trim his hair. For an ‘old guy’, he has a big head of hair and it’s curly…and he neglected to get a haircut in the weeks escalating to ‘shelter-in-place/stay home’ orders. “I’ll be careful!” I told him; all I’ve got is time…to get it right (he’s a little vain about his hair!!).
xoxo
Yesterday the repairman came with the spare parts to repair the fridge. I don’t think it would have lasted to next Monday when he had promised to come to do the final repairs with ordered spare parts. However, he got lucky when he ordered them. What a business it is when he comes……. we get him to wash his hands and we wear masks for quite a while when he has gone. Then comes the business of cleaning out the fridge and freezer where he has touched – in fact every bit of surface. Because the fridge has leaked water onto the floor and his dirty shoes had left stuff all over the floor, I then had to get down on my hands and knees and wash the kitchen floor. After the temperature in the fridge and freezer had reached the correct temperatures then it was time to start replacing stuff slowly so that the temperature remained correct. I am so thankful we have had the small fridge-freezer in the granny flat downstairs. It has been almost 3 weeks since this saga started and I am so glad it has finally ended.
More cleaning today as it is shopping day. Thank goodness we don’t need much, but I find it all exhausting by the time I have finished.
What an awful comment I have made – full of complaints. I really am reasonably happy with this isolation as I have plenty of things to do which I enjoy. My vege garden is growing well and I have plenty of knitting and sewing to occupy me. Almost finished making up my knitted sleeveless vest which is exciting. If the repairman hadn’t come yesterday I would have completed it.
Time to get moving………..
I thought your comments were interesting. I have an old, small frig and I just pray it will hold and not break down with all the extra food in it. My friend in a neighboring town has had to suffer a mandatory 6-hr (minimum) electrical shut-off today and she has TWO frig/freezers she’s feeling very nervous about; it was some municipal edict to work on the lines in, of all things, wildfire preparedness here in SoCalif which we tend to forget about in the face of this horrible epidemic. Their timing stinks, when people have clearly stocked up as instructed with the ‘stay home’ orders, yet we have wildfire danger, as a rule, from as early as May 1 and definitely June 1, so of course it’s something understood here. We’ve had computer/phone probs and they wanted to send a technician to the house to work indoors on our lines and we said no; I can’t have anybody coming in here right now unless we totally lose full capability, which we haven’t. I’ve tried to visualize what you just went thru with having a stranger come into the home (where we’re trying desperately to keep everything virus-free) and how I’d work with that … glad for you that it’s all done now.
A simple thing like a repair is so complicated now.
Don’t worry about complaining. It’s okay! Just because you found all that complicated and exhausting doesn’t make you a complainer. You’re just sharing your feelings.
Stay safe!
oh, budding trees and plants are a sight for sore eyes, aren’t they?! thanks for the pretty photos. glad you were able to get outside for a bit between the raindrops.
hooray for treats in the mail … and having a place to isolate them for a while.
hope your back feels better!
are the episodes of “cheers” something you and don order up? hope you can catch missed episodes if you want to see them in order.
happy puzzle-making and reading!
i am off work thursday so that’s when i plan to start reading “a gentleman in moscow”. may only get a couple pages done at a time (at least until i get hooked), but i am determined to get reading back in my life!
stay safe and well, everyone!
kathy in iowa
All eleven seasons of Cheers are on Netflix, Kathy. Stay safe, my friend!
thanks, claudia!
kathy in iowa
We wear gloves and wipe all the mail that is not junk. The junk goes right into the recycle bag. Packages are treated the same. We wipe them down and throw out the boxes and bags for recycling pick up. We had some severe thunderstorms this afternoon. We did not get the strong winds that were predicted,thank goodness.
Marilyn
We didn’t get severe winds but we did have winds all night long and still have them today! Stay safe, Marilyn.