Self-isolating is not all bad

You say no school to a parent and they tremble with anxiety. No schooling. No learning. How will the kids get by? Say no school to my granddaughters and they hear "hammock."

Although they may not be rushing about in the morning to catch the school bus and then spending all day in a crowded classroom, they are still doing some school work every day via a couple of home computers.

How much are they learning? That is an open question. Their parents are still anxious and the kids are still spending chunks of each spring day enjoying the hammock.

Neighbourhood asparagus stand is open

The land must be valuable. If it were growing new homes rather than shoots of asparagus, I'm sure the owners would be far wealthier.

The family growing and selling the asparagus has been doing this for decades. They've been doing it for so long that their crop is unique. It is an old hybrid no longer commonly grown in the province.

One year the Ontario asparagus crop failed. Rust. There was no locally grown asparagus in the grocery stores. But the little Greenland Asparagus stand had fresh, green spears for sale. Their crop was not the hybrid being attacked. It was not affected by the rust spores floating in the air everywhere in the province.

I worry about the little farm. Finding folk to pick the crop is getting harder and harder with each passing year. I fear that one year it will homes or stores filling the fields and not haphazard rows of an ancient asparagus hybrid.

Normal is looking more normal

The day is warm and London's biggest park, Springbank, had a sprinkling of people engaged in a number of activities: walking, jogging, skateboarding and biking.

Oh, the pandemic is still modifying behaviour. Most people seemed to be giving others a very wide berth. Social distancing was clearly still in force.

And yet, there was a back to normal  feel to the day that may not be bested until a vaccine is released.

Life goes on

I read an article in The Lancet, I believe, that said we should learn from this covid-19 pandemic. We have been taken down by our hubris.What is hubris? Excessive self-confidence. Pride in oneself bordering on defiance of the gods.

We are changing the planet. Modifying the only home we have and we are doing it in way that can only bring disaster. Covid-19 is a window on the future.

I can recall as a small boy worrying that the immense herds of wild animals found in Africa back in the early '50s were threatened. My mom thought I asked too many questions. I thought adults didn't ask enough.

This little wren is living a life modified by the fact it lives in close proximity to us. But, take us away and this little bird's life will go on. It appreciates us but it doesn't need us. But, in a very real sense, we don't fully appreciate nature and the wild world but we need it. And, we need to keep it rich and diverse and somewhat separate. We need to respect the others with whom we share this planet. Wildlife markets are not places of respect.

The lonely tulip. It was missed by the rabbits.

Off with their heads. Or at least, off with the blooms. One lonely tulip stands in my wife's garden. Left intact, so far, by the grazing rabbits. My guess is that come morning it too will be gone. Heck, even I can see it is probably quite delicious, cool in the evening air and covered with moist raindrops. I'm sure it is not only very pretty but yummy as well.

This blossom is a real pistil.

Our Japanese magnolia, which originated in China but that is another story, is finally in full bloom. It blooms a bit later than the the more common, at least in our neighbourhood, pink magnolia.

I love the look of the blossoms but it is the pistil and stamens at the core of the flower that I find most interesting. I understand all magnolias hide treasures like this deep inside the flowers. They all don't look like this but they are all spectacular, especially in close-up photos.

Should puzzles be sanitized? It's a puzzle.

As self-isolation continues, folks in my neighbourhood are facing the challenge of finding interesting things to do. One answer has been jigsaw puzzles. To this end, folk have been passing puzzles from home to home, mom to daughter and friend to friend. But one question keeps me awake at night; can jigsaw puzzle cats carry the coronavirus?

We're told to keep six-feet or more apart. We're told to wear a mask to protect others from our possibly contaminated breathe. We're told to sanitize this and to sanitize that. Should puzzles be sanitized, and if so, how? It would take a long time to wipe a thousand individual puzzle pieces.

It is a puzzle.