A Nail File? Okay. Sure in Everyday Ramblings

I took this Saturday when I was planting the starts. This is the plot next to mine in the community garden looking west. We met the lovely young woman whose plot this is yesterday when I took the crew down to show them what I had done so far.

Frieda was with us and there are no dogs allowed in the garden, so we were talking over the fence. She is a lot more ambitious than I am and planting a wide variety of seeds. I will go down tomorrow, or maybe later today, to look for bugs and slugs and plant nasturtium seeds.

Apparently, according to the package, one is supposed to rough them up with a nail file before planting.

Mrs. Sherlock and Charity hugged each other when they met. We were outside. They both had their second shots Friday. In three weeks, we will all be able to actually, wait for it, go inside each other’s domiciles and not wear masks! One of my hiking clubs is returning to open group hikes as of today. One still has to wear masks, have hand sanitizer, keep a reasonable distance and the hikes are on broader trails but still…

The vaccine rollout here is still so profoundly unfair though. It looks like Most Honorable will have to wait until May to get his first shot. He will be 65 in August with no underlying conditions. Don’t get me wrong, we are all incredibly grateful there are shots to be had but he, like so many of his students, would like to get back in the classroom with appropriate modifications. Our upper-level grade school students went back to class today for the first time in a year.

In a year.

That is a huge amount of time in a young person’s life. The drama of it all must feel overwhelming.

Because both of my walking companions were still feeling a bit fatigued yesterday after their second shots, I planned out a weird walking route that got in our 5 miles but kept us close in so if someone needed to bail it would be an easy trek home. We saw a lot of lovely burgeoning spring gardens and reveled in our new knowledge of the different types of daffodils.

Mrs. Sherlock has a friend (who belongs to a cult, her prerogative, but is always trying to draft Mrs. Sherlock into cult activities) who is taking these classes or workshops on “World Human Trauma”. As she brought this up, we walked by an area that had been covered in fresh bark dust.

Charity exclaimed that she loved the smell of bark dust and I blurted out that I absolutely hated it. They were both astonished at the vehemence of my opinion. They started teasing me about my past trauma with bark dust. It was pretty funny.

No, I did not have a traumatic experience with it, at least none that I am aware of. I think it is either the natural properties of the way it is processed or some chemical they treat it with, but my best guess is that smelling it was a migraine trigger.

As far as I have been able to ascertain, the community gardens here use either wood chips, straw or burlap to mulch and I can deal fine with all of those. It is nothing personal against the trees. I love the smell of trees.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and found myself thinking about mulching and compost and soil and… I did order a circular hoe today.

It is deflecting my anxiety about either a long wait or intense symptoms when I get my second shot Friday. Mrs. Sherlock is going to get me to the fairgrounds when they open. She was out of there in a half hour last week. Wish me luck when that time rolls around.

This is just all a stage for those of us who are grown up in the onslaught of uncertainty we are all faced with right now. I can’t imagine what it is like to be a teenager and have everything matter so very much.

Even as a jaded mature adult I am ready to kiss these hard times goodbye.

Last updated March 29, 2021