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?