Talking to Plants: It Is Snowing

After a long "Indian Summer", which was thoroughly enjoyed, it is snowing today. After those first big, gloppy flakes; it is now coming straight down like a powdered sugar. With the pandemic raging, I am hoping for a mild winter. A winter where I can still get out in my car and roam with the moonroof on my Veloster coupe open and the sunlight streaming in.

As for everyone, the pandemic is taking its mental toll. I make an effort each day to open all the window coverings and let as much of the light in as possible. I bake. I try to get better quality sleep, although I find it easier to fall asleep to the sound of Shane and Ryan's voices as they tell another creepy bedtime story on Buzzfeed... all of them "Unsolved" than listening to the white noise of a thunderstorm or the roiling surf.

I haven't had close contact with my son since that sobbing hug taken fleetingly as we were passing through Madison arranged at the last minute after the sudden and unexpected death of my father. Living alone, I am more alone, becoming shut off from significant other who does not live with me.

Even with vaccines coming, the winter will stretch out. I predict another surge come spring, which will be a surprise for many with the vaccine not reaching enough, soon enough. And, some of those will die; some who have already met the beast Covid and beat it back once, only to succumb in its second round.

Covid will be with us for some time. It will change how we will live. I hope these will be positive changes. There will be some economic devastation. There has been political devastation. We realize we live in a country divided. We are divided and I am not sure what the bridge looks like.

I hope we realize that our hope lies in our local communities. That our homes and garden spaces are important. That we need connections to the land and to each other. That we can continue to improve our skills. That we must adjust to change.

In the future, historian and grandchildren yet to be born will marvel about how we "were" in the past "normal". They will ask what we did in the Great Pandemic or why Grandma still washes all the cardboard and plastic containers of her groceries and has a year's supply of toilet paper in the closet. Hopefully, they will also frown on those without good hand washing processes or those who don't grow a portion of their food in their yards or homes, no matter how small those places might be.