Well, Hell!

Day 260: It's official. I am now a statistic. As careful as I have been, it finally caught me. Or vice versa, I guess. I will spare you the sordid details, but suffice to say that it hit me hard about dinnertime yesterday when, coincidentally, my power went out. I had such chills that I could barely walk, went to bed under a pile of blankets and passed a rough night. Better this morning, but I want to start on antivirals as soon as I can. It's out there, people. If it got me, it can get anybody.

Little Baby Lettuces

Day 188: Look carefully in the foreground. Those are the cotyledon leaves of little baby lettuces, courtesy of the sister-of-my-heart who lives clear across the country in New Hampshire.

Y'see, I zigged when I should have zagged. A few days before the first cases of COVID-19 appeared in a Kirkland WA nursing home, I was in town shopping. I wandered past the vegetable seed displays and said to myself, "Nah, it's too early yet. I'll get seeds in a couple of weeks." I wasn't expecting to be staying at home, trying to insulate myself against a dangerous disease. I thought life was going to continue normally, as did we all.

Because I am in two high-risk groups (my age, and the fact that I had pneumonia two years ago), I am not venturing out of my own neighbourhood, not for any reason. Some friends think I'm over-reacting, but I'd rather be safe than sorry, as the saying goes. However, my self-enforced isolation has put a substantial dent in my plans for the garden this year, and after bemoaning that fact to Patty, I found four packets of lettuce seed in my mailbox a few days later, shipped from far-away New Hampshire where a stay-at-home order was not in place at the time. There may not be any tomatoes to add to my salad, but at least I'll have greens and, if I'm lucky and tend them assiduously, the blueberries, raspberries and kiwi fruit should bear as well. With time on my hands, I'll have no excuse for letting the weeds grow.

River Bend

Day 165: This is the mighty Nisqually, meandering down through the section of its historic course not far from my residence. A few miles further on, it backs up against Alder Dam to form the reservoir known as Alder Lake. Had it not been so obstructed, it would have retained its natural cascades in a canyon etched some 400 feet deep. Further yet, it meets with another obstacle to its progress at LaGrande Dam. From there, it makes its lazy way to Puget Sound. It doesn't look like much in this photo, but when a warm rain follows a heavy snowfall on the Mountain, the Nisqually shows its temper. It spreads out across this plain and beats against the thirty-foot bluff, chipping away at the rocks embedded there. Sooner or later, it will win (Nature always does, you know) and (hopefully much later!) my little house will be swept downstream as the river reasserts its inalienable right to the valley.

There have been seasons when I lay awake at night, listening to the boulders falling and tumbling, propelled by flood waters. I can tell you it is not a comforting sound. I have been stranded by those same floodwaters on what I jokingly referred to as "Ashford Island" when the roads washed out both above and below me, cutting me off from any possible line of escape from their rage. In those times, I hunkered down to weather the literal storm, hoping that it would pass without claiming me. And when Mt. St. Helens erupted in my slightly larger "back yard," I sheltered in place to keep from breathing volcanic ash, the powdered remains of St. Helens' rocky cap. You must do what you must do, not what you wish to do in time of crisis if you intend to be a survivor. Listen up, people.