Notes from a Self Quarantine

Yes, I bought more plants yesterday at Home Depot and 5 more bags of soil. But I spent under $100 (for once)! So my plan today was to finish potting all the flowering plants I’ve bought this week (yes, I went twice this week to buy plants…) in all my ceramic pots. I typically spread the pots around the yard — some on the front porch, some on the back patio and then the remainder stays in my enclosed vegetable garden. I have a few stands that I put them on or I just disperse them around the raised garden beds. It usually looks pretty cool with all the different colored flowers. My husband is not a big fan of it, but what does he know about plants, right?

I was almost done with the planting this afternoon — I had three more pots to fill with flowers, and then the thunderstorms rolled in fast. Like really fast — it was bright and sunny with clear blue skies and then the next time I looked up there were angry dark clouds over my house. I went in to have lunch and the storm hit — there was wind, heavy rain and thunder. The heavy rain lasted about 20 minutes and then it looked like it stopped. So I went back outside and yes, it was raining slightly, but the sun was trying to come back out and I couldn’t hear the thunder anymore. I finished the last of my potted plants, and even planted a few tomato plants that my neighbor had given me earlier. I moved a few of the ceramic pots to the back patio (don’t tell my husband, he hasn’t noticed yet) and cleaned up all my empty plastic pots and the leftover bags of dirt. And yes, it was still raining lightly and now I was pretty much covered in mud, but I finished what I had set out to do this afternoon. Now of course, the sun ended up coming out in full force about an hour after I finished, but I got everything done, even in the rain! Yes, see — I am a gardening fool!

And I went to visit a friend!! You remember those types of people, right? People that you hang out with, maybe even outside of your home. They’re actually right in front of you, in the flesh, not on a Zoom call. You might even have to travel to see them. And bring your keys and driver’s license.

It was a big step for me today and the whole time I was there I kept thinking — why did it take me so long to do this?!? Ok, I get that we have a pandemic going on, that people are sick, that so many people have died, that we are supposed to be staying away from each other. But why didn’t I just drive over to her house before and just stand in her driveway, making sure that we were 6 feet apart. Why did I wait so many darn weeks?

Friendship is important, and seeing your friends and loved ones in the flesh, right in front of you, is so much better than seeing them on a computer screen or on your phone. Nothing can replace that type of connection. And as I have spent the last few weeks in various stages of being disconnected and unmotivated, I’m wondering if this was all I needed. Just the opportunity to see a friend in actual real life. I drove home happy, music blasting from my crappy car stereo, windows down. It was an amazing feeling. And one that I hope doesn’t take me over 10 weeks to feel again.

And you know what else was cool — I used her bathroom. Sure that doesn’t sound like much, but when you’ve been stuck in the house since the middle of March, it’s kind of freeing to be able to go into another bathroom, that you don’t have to clean, and feel comfortable using it! Thanks, Linda, for a fabulous afternoon!

My husband and I got the best gift today — a 30 lbs. box showed up on our front door step this afternoon — filled with beer!!

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Look at all that beer! That’s 36 cans of beer, my friends! And it’s all from two local breweries in McKinley, Texas. A friend of my husband’s from high school lives in McKinley and they were chatting the other night about beer (cause what else would they be chatting about, right??). I’m sure that the conversation started with my husband telling his buddy from home about all the local Massachusetts breweries we like to visit, so his friend decided to ship us some beer from his local breweries (thanks Greg!).

After opening the huge 30 lbs. box, which was packed so securely by the way (cause you don’t want to mess with beer!), my husband pulled out one of the cans — a sour pickle beer (um, I am so not sure how I feel about this beer) and stuck that in the fridge. His company has been hosting a Thursday evening virtual happy hour so folks can chat during this pandemic. My husband brought the sour pickle beer to the happy hour. He finished it, the brave soul, because I tried a sip and thought something died in my mouth. It was gross and tough to swallow. I do like pickles, but only when they are the accompaniment to a good deli sandwich. I never eat them in liquid form. Now my husband drinks pickle juice from the jar, which I also think is gross, but he even thought the sour pickle beer was a little rough to finish. I think he called it the beer you have “when you know you can only have one beer” which I think is code for “this beer sucks, but my friend sent it to me, so I am going to finish the darn thing”. But you use your own judgement.

Sour pickle beer aside, there are 30 other Texan beers for us to sample! One is named “Full Grown Man” and it’s an imperial stout with a 12.1% ABV — that will be a fun one to try! Maybe not on a work night.

Global Running Day is June 3 — I believe it’s annually celebrated on June 3, I always promise myself that I will participate, but for some reason or another I don’t. It’s probably because back in normal times, when I come home from work, I just don’t want to go back out there for a run and I decide to be lazy instead. Sometimes laziness just happens, don’t judge me.

Well today, I really didn’t have an excuse. I definitely tried to think of one, I even toyed with a few of them — it’s too late in the day, I really should just go shower instead, there’s work I really should be doing — yes, those were some of my excuses.

But I actually got out there today — it might have been my first Global Running Day in the past 5 years. Go me! It wasn’t too long of a run, it was hot because I waited until 4 p.m. (don’t tell my boss!), but it wasn’t too bad if I stayed in the shade. And I definitely need new sneakers, mine are so worn out, it was like running on two flat tires. I felt every inch of pavement and my poor knees were not happy with me. I’ll try to remember to call and order new shoes tomorrow. Now if I could just remember to write myself a note…

So my outdoor plants are doing fabulous! The new raised garden beds are amazing (thank you, husband!). I can’t believe how much everything has grown in the 3 weeks since I started planting. This is definitely the earliest that I have EVER started my vegetable garden and it shows. Sure, some of the seeds I planted 3 weeks ago haven’t started to sprout yet — maybe they will or maybe they are duds, but I am pretty impressed with what’s growing already. And I have plenty of time to re-seed if something doesn’t come up. Oh the beauty of being early! Or is it really just being on time for once with my vegetable garden…

Even the flowering plants that I bought yesterday are doing really good. I haven’t repotted them yet, but a few of them had new flowers this evening! I meant to grab the pretty ceramic pots from the basement today, but eh, just didn’t get to it. It is supposed to be warmer again the next few days — that’ll make me want to get out there and plant!

And I have one more bed that I want to fill with soil — it’s from last year, smaller than my new beds, and I am planning on planting sunflower seeds in there, see if I can do a nice flower bed. I definitely need to grab more soil to fill the bed before I plant the seeds. It’s a little on the crooked side too — I tried to level the ground beneath it last week and I didn’t do as good of a job as I thought I did… oh well, project for the weekend!

And I was feeling very unfocused again today. There really wasn’t anything going on at work and I wasn’t motivated enough to start anything new. Maybe it’s because of everything else going on right now.

So I took myself to Home Depot this afternoon and bought a bunch of flowering plants for my garden. They had so many different ones than when I went two weeks ago — bright yellows and orange, some purple and fuchsia. And they finally had the marigolds — I bought a bunch in different shades, I just love how they look in the garden and on my patio. They are just such happy flowers — all those shades of yellow and orange!

And I realize that purchasing flowering plants isn’t going to solve any of the problems affecting my community right now, but for a moment those plants made me happy and hopeful, and that’s a good thing. They made me remember that there is good in this world, sometimes you just have to look for it. Maybe you’ll see it in the actions of a stranger or in planting a bunch of yellow daisies in your backyard, but it’s definitely there. And that’s important.

Sunday has always been food shopping day in my household. I’ll put the list together in the morning — I focus on what we need for breakfast and lunch during the week, any household items we’re running low on like toilet paper and paper towels (haha!) and I will also list if we have any usable leftovers from the past week, like we have two hamburger buns and half a bag of potatoes.

My husband does the actual grocery shopping — he’ll tell you that he’s forced to do it because I take too long reading labels, but don’t believe him. He’s the cook in our relationship, so he likes to do the grocery shopping so he can pick out what he wants to make that week. And he’ll use my list of usable items to come up with a plan for that week’s dinners.

Now while he’s at the grocery store, I’ll clean out our refrigerator, throw out all the crap that we can no longer use, wash out all the recycling and get our kitchen ready for the coming week. You know like when we actually had to pack lunches and leave the house to go to work…

Once he is back from the grocery store, I unpack all the items and put them away. And recently try not to obsessively scrub down every package… And because I put everything away, I usually have a pretty good idea what we are going to eat for dinner during the week.

Tonight as we were making our Sunday evening grilled pizza (we like routine in this house, folks!), I asked my husband what he had going on this week and he mentioned he had a later appointment on Tuesday and he would probably smoke the short ribs that day. Now I didn’t remember putting short ribs in the fridge today, there were a couple packages of chicken breast and we had some sausage leftover from last night. I mentioned that I didn’t see any short ribs. He mumbled something, grabbed his car keys and headed put to his truck. He came back a few seconds later — with the short ribs. I guess they fell out of the bag in the back seat and had been laying on the floor for the past 4 hours… Who’s looking forward to short ribs now on Tuesday?!?

I felt bad he was a little annoyed that they fell out of the bag. Should I start asking him about all the grocery purchases after I put them away? He didn’t really like that idea…but maybe he’d like it better than having to purchase more short ribs tomorrow!

Hope that this isn’t how the rest of the week will pan out!

And I think that I might have gotten a little bit too much sun. I went for a run — it was a slow one because it was pretty warm out there, but at least I went. Then I spent most of the afternoon out in the garden picking up all the fallen crap from our oak trees. Ugh, there was so much in all the raised beds, I am surprised that I don’t have an army of oak trees already growing in all the new raised bed. But I now have 3 cucumber plants and 2 summer squash plants starting to grow!

I was out there for awhile weeding and cleaning out the beds. Then my husband and I were out on the back patio hanging out — he was watching some show on his iPad and I was reading a book. About 7 p.m. I started getting a wicked sinus headache — was I dehydrated from all the time I spent outside today? Or was it from all darn pollen that is covering our yard? I was planning on taking my car out for a spin this afternoon, but was completely put off by the mound of yellow pollen currently hanging out on my windshield. Maybe that will be a project for tomorrow!

It was supposed to rain this weekend, I was hoping that it would — we have pollen tumbleweeds on our driveway, at this point only the rain will be able to wash them away. Tomorrow is going to be another nice sunny day — and that definitely makes staying at home easier!

I seriously can’t tell. Was yesterday Monday? Am I supposed to be working today? Could I have slept in this morning? I honestly have no idea. And that’s OK, right??

I’ve had trouble concentrating this week — with my work tasks, my home tasks, just with everything. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened this week, I just have had problems focusing. Last week was fine, but this week? Meh.

I had two work projects that I needed to get done by today and OMG was it a struggle to finish them. I got them both done today within normal business hours, but the struggle to sit at my home office computer and concentrate on finishing them?? Ugh. Usually I do not mind the push of a deadline, it usually soars me forward with ideas, but this week I was just not having it.

And now I am just tired. We order take out food from a local restaurant on Friday evenings and I ordered a pasta dish that was out of my normal ordering comfort zone. It was delicious, but had a sauce that I thought would be more white wine-based, which was actually a nice term for alfredo-based. Not that I have anything against alfredo — it was just heavier than I thought it would be. And because I am always a member of the clean plate club — I finished the whole damn thing when I should have just eaten half of it.

So now I am full, cranky and unfocused. And of course tired, because tired just seems to be my normal state these days. I did an amazing yoga class this morning before work, and now my legs hurt too. It’s been just an odd week.

But like Scarlett O’Hara always said — tomorrow is another day, and it’s another chance for me to feel better and get myself together.

Seems like pretty darn good this year! I went outside this evening to check on the raised garden beds — the spinach seeds that I planted less than a week ago are already sprouting! I am super excited about this, which sounds silly, but I’ve had such bad luck growing spinach in past years. If it ever started growing, the first major rain storm we had would just drown those poor suckers. They’d be there, it would rain, and then they’d be gone. Such a buzz kill.

Last year, I actually got some spinach — it was small, but it was edible. There wasn’t much, but I ate it. And took photos of it just to document that I actually grew spinach. I did two rows of seeds this year, and there’s already two rows of sprouts! Now it hasn’t rained in a few days…keeping my fingers crossed that they last!

Some of my sunflower seeds are also growing, which means that any second now all the neighborhood wildlife will be in my backyard munching on sunflower seeds and looking for anything else they get get their paws on. Like my tomatoes and cucumbers and corn stalks…

Oh, the life of a home vegetable gardener! And I’m looking forward to all of it.