And We All Felt Good in Everyday Ramblings

The garden, early this morning. The plot with the artichoke is the one next to mine. If you look carefully, you will see a giant oak limb on the roof of the shed and an unhappy structurally unsound shed it now is. The giant limb, which came down from heat stress splits into two long branches. One took out a chunk of fence on the other side of the shed and is taking up a fair amount of sidewalk. The other squashed two raised bed plots in front.

It was a bit of a shock to discover this today. Never a dull moment. The Community Garden is run by our Parks Department, and I am afraid they are going to declare my plot unsafe. With tomatoes just coming on!

The tree leans over the garden and most of the weight is not over my plot at all, but it is still under the tree. Arborists are in such demand right now I don’t know how long it will be before they can get someone out. A lovely older woman was marveling at the branch fall when I arrived, and she said another oak in the neighborhood had done the same thing.

Those poor people suffering with the flooding in Europe. I hate climate change. I hate hate hate it and no I do not have any interest in moving to Mars, thank you very much.

And our case counts are up, and our hospitalizations are up, and could you please just get vaccinated all right already? I read about a study yesterday that is saying that the Delta variant dumps 1,000 times more virus into environment then the “Classic Covid”. Ugh.

The good news is that The Sherlocks put the fear of some scary deity into their young tenant and he showed them his vaccine card on Thursday, masked in the back garden. After the birthday debacle he went out the next day and got his first Pfizer shot.

I guess we go at this, one resistant person at a time. I did notice today more folks were wearing masks in the grocery so that is a bit of a relief. The gym can wait.

When I got home from shopping the cats had knocked over a couple of the columbine seedlings. I did what I could to save them. The good news is that I am getting “the third leaf” on some of the columbines and tomato seedlings. So just in case I lose the plot I will have something to grow here.

The other Community Garden in the neighborhood has a lock on the gate. I noticed that in the big one across town we visited last weekend too. Ours does not have a lock. Maybe because it has two gates? Anyway, I have never seen anyone in our garden that isn’t there for all the right reasons, but when I walked by the other one this morning there was a slim young man sleeping in it near the fence. I think I startled him. He must have hopped the fence as the lock was on the gate.

Mrs. Sherlock and I did a warmup joint activation practice on Zoom yesterday and then right after she drove over, and we went with Frieda for a lovely walk up in the hills behind my place. It was temperate and we got to see some great gardens we haven’t seen in a couple of months. Wildlife friendly seems to be the theme this year and there are bees everywhere. And Sea Holly is quite popular.

We ran into an older woman who we had met last year who used to own a standard poodle much like Frieda. She took a picture last year. She was so excited to see Frieda! It was a gift for her, living without pets now in the big retirement community. It made us all feel good.

After our walk we stopped at a Starbucks and as we were outside on a bench a young houseless guy came up and asked for enough money for a cup of coffee or something. Mrs. Sherlock took him inside and bought him what he wanted with the Starbucks card she had, which was a large coffee with cream, asked if he wanted food. He didn’t.

He was very polite and a bit astonished that she talked to him. It made us all feel good.

What a world.

Last updated July 17, 2021