A road not taken

 

There's a famous poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. It starts "Two roads diverged . . . "

There's a bend in Hyde Park Road where, if one pays attention, there is the hint of long forgotten "Y".

Go right, through the curb cut and almost immediately encounter a couple of posts with a length of chain suspended between them

This the Hyde Park Road not taken, and for good reason. This is the old, closed, former Hyde Park Road. It was once a rather attractive stretch of highway. No more. Today, even Robert Frost would likely decide to stay on the well-traveled path.

This also came from China.

One. There is just one little brightly coloured bud on our entire magnolia tree. Tomorrow there will be more and then more and then one morning we will get up, look out the kitchen window, and see our entire magnolia tree in bloom.

I always thought magnolia trees were had large pink and white flowers. When I bought our tree it was small and sported only green leaves. When spring arrived, red-purple flowers appeared. Flowers with long droopy petals. It looked nothing like the magnolia trees with which I was familiar.

After a visit to the gardening centre I knew what I had was either a Japanese or Chinese flowering magnolia. A species of magnolia that was not found in Southwest Ontario in the past.

Cooped up inside, waiting out the quarantine, my wife and I will delighted when the tree is heavy with blooming flowers. Heck, we were excited just to see a little, rain-wet bud.

With the parks closed, kids play in the court

With the parks all closed, neighbourhood kids are getting antsy. The large, paved circle that gives our short street its designation as a court, is now very well used. Today it was bikes, the other day it was road hockey and tomorrow I'm sure it will be anther group and another activity.

I understand that residential streets that lack sidewalks and force the sharing of the paved street space among pedestrians, playing children and cars are called woonerfs in Holland. In London these types of residential spaces are often courts.

I couldn't get too close when taking the picture. One doesn't want to threaten the social distancing that the kids are being so careful to maintain. The little boys are actually quite delightful and I would not have wanted to risk upsetting them.

If the grandkids were here, this groundhog would be named.

The groundhog stays mostly out of sight. We know he's been around by all the tulips and other spring plants that are no longer in our garden. Between the rabbits and the groundhogs we may not have many spring flowers.

My wife is upset. Me? I enjoy watching the wildlife. But shusssh. Don't tell my wife.

Found Art_Sorta

 

Years ago I took my granddaughters to an art-in-the-park event. We saw this piece of art done in glass. It was a decoration for one's garden. It is simply old, discarded glass objects glued together. I bought it and it still stands today in the garden beside our front door.

Line-ups continue

Needing a few food items, I had to go to the grocery store. The line-up stretched a long way but there are not that many in line. Note the large gaps between waiting customers. Although I am well back in the parking lot, there are only about half a dozen folk ahead of me.

A note about No Frills. It is a discount grocery store. The plain white colour with big splashes of bright yellow convey the impression of cheap and the yellow is reminiscent of some of the least expensive products in the store. These  products, made especially for No Frills, come in plain yellow containers with simply black lettering.

Cars are not being driven. Result? An oil glut.

Yesterday the price of a barrel of U.S. crude fell into negative territory for the first time in history. Stockpiles of oil have overwhelmed storage facilities. Buyers were being offered something like $38 U.S. to take the oil off the hands of the sellers. Totally weird.

Take a look at parking lots. Compared to how they looked a couple of months ago, they are empty. People are not driving, planes are not flying, and oil is not being used. But the air is cleaner.

Rabbits have invaded

This self-isolation means no granddaughters keeping eyes peeled for rabbits in the yard eating budding tulips. And that translates into no blooming tulips this spring. None. Nada. Nothing. Zero.

Oh well, without the girls yelling "Rabbit Stew" and running outside hands waving, the little monsters have taken up residence at our kitchen dining-nook window. No point on doing any yelling after the blooms have been eaten.

The rabbits seem to be having as much fun watching us as we do watching them.

Front line workers go to work for us; we stay home for them.

There are no crowds out protesting social distancing and the temporary shutting down of many businesses in London. And to many of us, the workers who are still going to work are not lucky but brave.

The sentiment expressed on this sign, thank you to all the front line workers, is one commonly encountered. This is a tough moment and it seems everyone is trying to get onboard, cooperate and successfully see this pandemic through.

A comment reprinted from the group FB page

I joined this group because I love cities. Always have. To see what this new virus, the coronavirus, has done to our cities, to our way of life, amazes me. It has put so much under the microscope, so to speak, and what I believe we are finding is not good. 

This is an awful virus but it could be a lot worse. We, the world, is actually getting off rather lightly. We have to learn from this. We have to tighten up; we have to improve a lot of our systems. The next pandemic may be the bad one, the one that attacks everyone and just the old(er) and frail. 

I cannot believe, that there are people who don't understand that social distancing is not just for their protection, especially if they are younger, but one practises it for the protection of the seniors in their lives. Protest social distancing, gather in a big, tightly packed group, pick up the virus and take it home to mom and dad, to grandma and grandpa. 

Talk about the complete antithesis to how to run a proper urban civilization. I shake my head. (But I am proud of those who have given this their full support despite the difficulties, and the great unkowns - many people, and companies, are to be commended. There are a lot of fine citizens out there.

The comment above was a follow-up to my comments that accompanied the above charts which I posted to the Daily Photo FB page. These are but part of the information released and updated daily by the Australian government. Note the amount of illness spread out through the population and then not the deaths. The deaths are all among seniors, those from about 55 up. The peak for deaths is among those in their 80s. Just talking about the death without attaching sex and age group information is almost meaningless.

More comes from around the world than just the corona virus

 

I smiled as I put out tonight's dinner. More than just the coronavirus comes to us from around the world, I thought. The basmati rice came from India, the garlic from California, the lemon came also from the States, the yellow sweet pepper and asparagus from Mexico and the rainbow trout came from Chile. Only the tomatoes were local, grown in a hot house an hour southwest of London.

Why even the plate came from outside the country: Portugal. Thankfully the coronavirus has not made an appearance in our home and we hope it never does.

Kids now doing school work online

I was on Facebook when I heard a computer beep and a flashing light on my computer monitor indicated I had a message. Before I knew it I had my granddaughter on the screen, a little image in the bottom right corner showing the image that I was transmitting and I was having an online chat with my youngest granddaughter.

The little girl and her older sister are now doing their school work online. They are using a program called BlueStacks. BlueStacks works with Facebook and so with her school work done, the kid tried calling Judy and me. It wasn't perfect but it worked well enough. I now have BlueStacks loaded and I'll see how our online chats go in the future.

Social Distancing at the grocery store

I finally got out of the house. I made a quick trip to Costco with a stop at the small, family market on the way home. Tuesdays and Thursdays Costco opens an hour early for seniors. I was done in less than an hour and so had time to stop at Remark which opened at nine a.m.

The early morning shoppers were lined up right around the store waiting for the doors to open. Line-ups seemingly go forever today. When people are frightened and leaving eight and ten feet between themselves and others in line, lines grow fast. And when the doors open, the lines move fast.

I feel like I'm living in a bad, made-for-television movie. This simply does not feel real. And yet, not only is this real, but it will continue in some form until a vaccine is available and herd immunity kicks in.

Raccoons have always practised social distancing

 

It's definitely spring. The raccoons are back. It's too bad our granddaughters are not back. They are missing seeing all the wild visitors enjoying our backyard.

I'm not sure what this raccoon was enjoying but it sat on the top of our wall and quietly dined. Sometimes I'm tempted to put out carrots and train the wildlife to stop by for a quick dinner. Seems wrong but then is eating old cookies from someone's garbage an improvement?

Aren't kissing booths just a cartoonist joke?

 

With my wife and I are practising self-isolation, Getting out and about to take pictures is hard. So, I spent the afternoon tidying my basement storage room. I found some photos taken during my career as a staff photographer at the daily paper.

I have always found this image, taken about 1980, a very strange photo. The Board of Education was holding a park activities event for all the city's public schools. One event was a kissing booth. I had never seen such a thing. I had thought kissing booths were a joke. A figment of the imaginations of slightly off-kilter cartoonists. 

This young girl was selling kisses for 3-cents a kiss! Yuck! And dozens and dozens of young boys were crowded around the booth with one of the boys waving a dollar bill. I took the picture and I thought I had something, something weird, something that should never be but was. The picture made the paper but the editor thought it was very ho-hum'.

I entered it in photo contests sponsored by photojournalist organizations; it went nowhere. I entered it in a photo competition at the fair; it collected no votes. Maybe today, some four decades later, someone will be shocked that this was ever allowed to happen, let alone encouraged. I feel it makes a clear statement as to the state of thinking back then -- or the lack of thinking.

Kissing booth. Disgusting.

 

Remembering the days before COVID-19

As my wife and I sat alone in our home self-isolating, we recalled the days before COVID-19 and, forgive me, before Donald Trump. The border between Canada and the U.S. was a friendly border back then. I can recall when a driver's licence was all one needed to cross into the States.

We would leave London for the U.S. in our aging roadster with a body that was aging more gracefully than our own. We'd visit friends in the Detroit area, we'd lunch in a wonderful small-town diner, we'd cruise the backcountry roads and enjoy the hospitality.

Those days may be over for awhile. Social distancing may become the norm. And crossing the border now takes a passport. It is not so easy anymore. The border restrictions have tightened on both sides. Just the other day Prime Minister Trudeau announced asylum seekers attempting to enter Canada from any entry point along the Canada-U.S. border will be returned to the States.

According to the Globe and Mail, possibly the most influential paper in Canada, "More than 57,000 asylum seekers have entered Canada through unauthorized border crossings since 2017, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced a crackdown on illegal immigration."

"Most of the asylum seekers have been able to remain in Canada through a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement (a loophole the U.S. under Trump has not honoured) . . . . refugee advocacy groups have encouraged the government to make it easier for people fleeing the U.S. to seek asylum in Canada, and are disappointed with the decision. Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, called the move 'beyond disappointing and disgraceful.' "

Some have called Prime Minister Trudeau's move downright un-Canadian.

You know, somedays being isolated isn't so bad.

Healthcare from a COVID-19 safe distance

 

With COVID-19 making visiting a hospital a questionable thing to do, even if normally you'd jump in your car, or call an ambulance, today you think twice, pick up the phone and make a call. I called.

I was asked if MyCareLink Patient Monitor was indicating a problem? An out-of-control arrhythmia or tachycardia event? Nope. I'm jsut a little dizzy, I said. My blood pressure is 62 over 41 with a pulse rate of 50.

With a reading like that, there is no surprise that you're dizzy, I was told. It should pass, If not, call us again. Your pacemaker won't let your pulse drop below 50 bpm and your blood pressure should slowly comeback up. 

Take comfort in the fact that your low blood pressure won't kill you. I smiled and hung-up Healthcare in London in the year 2020.

Snow: nothing surprises us

 
It's early April. The days are longer, warmer and snowier. Snowier? Don't ask. It is a strange world in which we are living. Last night we were kept awake by numerous bright bolts of lightning followed by oh-so-loud cracks of thunder. Earlier in the evening, hail the size of golf ball hit North London, punching holes in plastic siding.

So, when does the plague of frogs arrive?

Joy

 

It rained yesterday. It stormed last night. This morning it was too wet to work in the garden. But come mid-afternoon, it was warm and beckoning. My wife's garden has little flowers beginning to bloom but the petals are spotted with mud splatter thanks to the heavy rain.

Then I noticed the little rock with the word Joy etched on one side. My granddaughters saw the rock in a craft shop and immediately wanted it for the garden. My wife looked at my picture and smiled. "We all need a little Joy today." 

Clearly, buying the little rock was a good idea.

It's not the way we saw it.

The picture on the left was linked to a Twitter tweet. It raised a lot of concern and anger. These people were clearly not practising social distancing. Complaints were lodged going all the way to the Prime Minister having angry tweets addressed to him

The local paper went out and soon realize the image was an example of photographic foreshortening. The shoppers appear much closer together than they really are. It is an illusion and not reality. (Not quite true, but an in depth discussion takes awhile. When I taught photography I had to take a student to the physics department to get him to understand. Let's not go there.)

The line may not have been as long when the news shooter arrived but he took two images that nicely illustrate how the same line can look quite different depending upon the angle.

Kudos to our local newspaper for nipping this brouhaha in the bud.

A blister beetle or so I believe

It was a big, attractive, dark blue beetle. I took its picture but I didn't touch it. I'm self-isolating and if I can't get close to my grandkids, I'll be damned if I'm going to get close to a bug. Turns out, the expression rather fits when used here. The bug is a blister beetle. Touch it and, you guessed it, you may get a damn blister or two. Ouch!

Seems the little fella excretes a toxic body fluid through its leg joints. Colourless and ordourless, the fatty fluid can cause blisters upon contact with the skin. Be alert as these are often found on flowering plants right across North American. Relatives that look similar but are coloured differently can be found in various places right around the globe.

I'm proud of how good Londoners are at following orders

Last night my wife and I picked up seven bags of groceries without entering the store or making contact with anyone. As we left the lot, we noticed a very loose line-up of people patiently waiting to get into the LCBO (Liquor Board of Ontaro) store. The line wrapped right around the store.

My wife  and I are both amazed at how willing Londoners are to follow the social distancing guidelines. (My picture is not from the LCBO. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring my camera with me to the grocery store. Oops.)

Call in your grocery order and pick up later

A car sits with its rear hatch door open as the owner waits to have his groceries brought from the store to his car. With the fear of catching COVID-19 growing daily, more and more Londoners are taking advantage of the Express service offered at some area grocery stores.

Call the store, give them your order, when your order is ready the store staff will call, pay with your credit or debit card and then drive to the store for pick up. There are reserved parking spots at the front of the store. Use your cell phone to tell the store staff you are there and within minutes your groceries a have been brought out and placed in your trunk.

I wonder if the service will be as popular once the coronavirus has been brought under control.

Coronavirus or not, life goes on

As more and more stuff comes to a grinding halt, it's nice to see something, if only a little flower, popping up out of the winter-damp leaves, opening its petals and blooming for all to see.

The little flower is, of course, a crocus, one of the first flowers to make an appearance each spring. As the cold eases its months-long grip, the cheerful little blossoms begin to erupt -- sometimes while there is still snow lingering on the ground.


In the past, strollers stopped without thought to enjoy these little harbingers of spring but this year folk look for others first. No stopping in groups. Keep six-feet or more of social distancing. 

Sadly, the crocuses will be gone long before the coronavirus has packed its bags and departed.

Won't be back for awhile; self-isolating

The Costco store looks almost empty and it was. Only so many customers are allowed in side at one time. Someone must leave before another person is allowed to enter. Products, like toilet paper, are being carefully rationed.

Note the yellow tape on the floor at the check-out. Shoppers lining up to make their purchases must stop their cart on a yellow line. People are being forced to practise a little social distancing.

My wife and I won't be going back for some time. Probably weeks. Our daughter has agreed to do all our shopping. We are no longer taking our granddaughter daily. We are self-isolating. The biggest wave of infections and death from covid-19 are expected to roll over the province in days. No more than two weeks at most and the viral toll should be hitting its peak. We have our finger crossed.