April 17

If you thought winter is over you aren't looking out my window. We are getting wet, measurable (predicted to measure up to 4+ inches) snow. Yeah! I said SNOW. My various containers are covered including the ones showing new growth in the bee balm, peppermint and yarrow pots. I'm not particularly worried since they survived being frozen over the worst of the winter. However, it does put a stop to any clean up I had planned. Too wet, too cold. But we are still 4-6 weeks away from our safe planting time. All of the plants I started are doing well. I just potted the cuttings that came off the spearmint runner I brought in about a month ago. They had been in water and doing nicely. The peppermint I accidentally pulled up while cleaning up the pot is also doing well but is still in water. I will give it another couple of weeks before separating the plants and putting them in soil. I also filled nine more pots and will seed them tomorrow.

It is a bit of a shock to realize that we are half past April already. Several people on line and on the various news feeds I listen to or read have commented about how they lose track of days. Is it Wednesday or Thursday? How did I miss Tuesday entirely? We organize our lives around what have we do and where we have to be each day. My time was once organized by semesters and on which days/times the classes I attended/taught were scheduled. Or according to what time on which day I had to be at work.  I have been fully retired for 10 years and my days are not at all organized. I do have things I want to do but no time by which or during which they have to be done. Those bloggers/commenters who live mostly outside the economy (retired or working from home on their own businesses or somehow supporting themselves without a "steady" job, which isn't so steady any more) are doing much better psychologically than so many others who are going "stir crazy."

Ronni Bennett writes about the "virus demons" and how to handle them. And, reading the post and some of the responses, I realize that my days are actually fairly structured. Our furry little alarm clocks (a.k.a., the cats) wake us between 3:30 and 4;30 each morning. We watch local news and then switch over to another news, often the BBC until 7:30 or so during which time I do some form of needlework. Wash up, make beds, dress and have breakfast and then deal with the e-mail and posts followed by our main meal between 12 and 1pm. In between I might do more needlework, tend my plants or fill pots for more seeds planting season being not far off. Or I might do some clean up outside getting ready for transplanting. Or read. We get the afternoon local news and might watch some of #45's so-called briefing so long as he stays on topic and doesn't shift into his brag mode/pity party mode. I have seen the protests against the shutdowns and restrictions. It doesn't surprise me. People want their old life back and they need a paycheck. Last stats I saw indicate that a majority of our population live paycheck to paycheck and have little or no savings. Is it any wonder that at least one food bank in Texas had an astounding line of cars and served something like 10,000. I have heard similar stories from other places. If I had to choose between starvation and the possibility of getting the corona virus, I would choose the virus. And the too-oft-heard argument that such a choice not only exposes me to the virus but everyone in the family doesn't really hold against hungry people at home.

Well, #45 has finally got his way--at least so far as governor are discussing how they might open up the economy. It had no real specifics--not surprising since he doesn't do facts. And it paved the way for him to claim credit if all goes well (after all he told them to do it) and to slither out of the blame if things don't go well (THEY screwed up my perfect plan). And I doubt the economy is going to come roaring back to what it was before the pandemic. People have too much to catch up on--like any rent or mortgage payments that were suspended, like any utility bills that were suspended, like any car payments that were suspended, etc. And we don't know how many business won't be opening up again. How many of those 26+ million people laid off since mid March will have jobs to go back to?
And without a reliable treatment hopefully coupled with widespread, reliable testing we have no assurance that we won't be back in the crapper real soon.