Should be a nice day. [72F sunny and blue sky @10am]
Yesterday was another beautiful day, but it did get HOT. 100F in the sun and in my driveway. Caught me a bit by surprise as I was moving from shade to sun and there was a nice breeze. Realized I was panting and went inside to cool down for a while.
I was busy doing yard work and cleaning and organizing. I mowed the back yard. I don’t want the lawn guys back there, too much to see that isn’t there during normal times. Plus, I don’t want the guys shedding virus and spitting all over the place. So I mow, and blow, and yesterday I also did some edging.
In the garden, the cabbage seems to be doing well. The broccoli is still alive, and growing, and the brussel sprouts are alive, but haven’t really changed size. Last year’s pepper plants are heavy with sweet delicious peppers. This year’s are growing well too. The tomato plants still live, but haven’t flowered or set fruit. Potato plants continue their vigorous growth, although there are fewer plants in each tower bag. The onion sets seem to have taken hold and are growing. There is attrition due to something, squirrels mostly. I think I’ll be lucky to get ten whole onions in the fall. No sprouts from any of my seeds yet.
The citrus trees all have fruit this year. Every tree, which has never happened before. I don’t know how many will make it to harvest, and I’m betting only a few oranges, but maybe I’ll get grapefruit and limes this year! The peach tree is fully leafed in and the remaining apple tree is struggling to get leafed. The trees in the store were covered in leaves weeks ago.
The blueberry sticks have all set fruit. Maybe we’ll double our yield this year and get a full cup? Kids have fun with them anyway. The grapevines are growing. The one is vigorous, the other died back to a foot from the ground. No fruit from that one this year, maybe no new vines. Haven’t had any of my grape nemesis caterpillars show so far, but I’m vigilant.
Take any opportunity you get to add to your long term and medium term food supply. These processing plant shutdowns will likely continue, and we’ll probably see transportation issues or teamster type issues at cross docks and transfer agents. Someone needs to unload the trucks, and that almost always means a guy on a forklift. It’s not a hard job but it is demanding. Essential workers are getting sick, and I expect that will get worse as the restrictions ease.
I’m glad to hear reports that stores have restocked, and that goods are available. Take advantage of that so that NEXT time, you won’t be caught short. Even if we’re on the downside of this, and I don’t think we are, TPTB are starting to talk about the second wave. China has locked down even more people again, something like 11M so far.
The third world is starting to really see their first wave sweeping through. It’s gonna be a tsunami soon. FWIW, we have been getting a LOT of food from those third world nations. That’s where all the ‘out of season’ fruit and veg comes from. (And the Imperial Valley in Cali which relies on the same sort of labor.) I expect that will get disrupted soon, and the extent, if the wuflu is unchecked, could mean no laborers to pick the crops, no way to get them here, and we’re back to thinking that citrus at Christmas is a Big Deal ™. I remember as a kid when getting a case of oranges or grapefruit at Christmas was a nice corporate gift, and my dad was happy to get a single orange as his Christmas gift when he was a kid.
The bottom line is that this thing is still spreading, and growing, and there is no effective treatment. People are still dying, and we’re discovering that maybe the survivors are not escaping unscathed either. You don’t want to get it. In the US, I expect that we’ll see localized outbreaks that grow rapidly, and then recede, and it will be going on for a long time, as the hotspots move around. We are about to experimentally determine the amount of economic contact vs public health isolation that the country is willing to accept. Like any other human endeavor, that process is going to be messy, but we’ll also figure it out.
Keep in mind that if there were no more infections starting today, we’ll still have more than 760K cases that will need to resolve, and the totals would continue to rise for the next month at least. If even 5% of those cases die, that’s an additional 37K added to the 50K so far. IF no new cases were added. New cases will continue to be added for some time though.
So, stay in, stay safe.
nick
Oh, and today marks my 15th year as a married man. Short time compared to some of you, but something I never spent much time thinking about when I was younger. I married well, and I can only hope she feels the same 🙂