March: Finally

 

It’s March. Finally. March is hopeful, even if it’s miserable from moment to moment. This week it’s been sunny and warm enough that Catmandoo could sit in his fold-up camp chair on the wart for an hour or more at a time, and he’s had his breakfast en plein air  a couple of times, which makes him purr very loudly and smile like only a big cat can.

The Buddha on the front mini-porch went, in five days, from being covered in snow up to his toppest  top snail to free of snow to his waist, to free of snow completely, although still completely surrounded by it. I can see the very tops of the giant heather patch just beyond the Buddha and the plowed-up tall bank of snow. Out the back window, the ground is still all white; but I can see almost the entire of the compost bins, and the two raised beds right next to the house’s south wall are, today, free of snow, making me dream a little of over-wintered parsnips. The ground will have to thaw quite a bit before I can get at those, however.

And exactly on time, I smelled skunks at night during the last two days in February. I haven’t seen them, but the smell tells me they’re out, mating, and going on dinner dates to my compost bins.

Also during the last weeks of February, the wild turkeys, which I hadn’t seen curly poop nor feather of all winter, suddenly turned up looking for hand-outs. I heard a banging outside and, going to the kitchen window, saw 8 perched on both the top and bottom rails on the wart, gobbling down the seed I’d left for much smaller birds as fast as they could, and the rest of the 20-fowl herd on the ground, scratching for the scratch seed I’d tossed out after seeing their foot-prints the day before. Wild turkeys are entirely too large to look anything but goofy perched on a wart rail, especially the lower rail, and as soon as they saw me moving near the window, they took off in a turkey tizzy and flew into the trees – literally, into them, not onto them, and then fell to the ground – next to the kitchen pond across the driveway. I managed to catch a photo of one on the rails through the window before it had a chance to follow its mates.

I have all my seed orders made, except for the seed potatoes, which I want to get from a farm in Maine that I can’t seem to rouse on the phone and can’t work out from their very peculiar catalog how to order by mail. I’ve already heard back from one of the seed companies I’ve ordered from, so expect I’ll start getting seeds in the mail sometime during the next few weeks. Not the onion and shallot and leek sets, I dearly hope – I hope the companies will have the sense to hold those until April, when I might actually be able to plant them.

The unknown flower on my windowsill bloomed, and its bloom looks vaguely familiar, like I should know what it is, but I still don’t. It’s pretty, and must be something I planted – I’m guessing a leftover from some store-bought plant that maybe Mom gave me last winter. I’ve tried looking it up, but find several close-but-not-quite-right candidates, so I still don’t know what it is.

Which also describes the current political candidate situation. As it starts to look like it’s going to be either Bernie or Biden – oh, sigh. Like I said, close but not quite right. We love Bernie, but he’s old, he’s had a heart attack, being president will probably kill him, which we don’t want because we need him to keep us honest if for no other reason. He’ll energize the youngsters (and we oldsters who want him to be able to do pretty much everything he wants to do) and the folks who voted for him last time but switched to Trump when Bernie was cheated out of the nomination; and he scares people who forget that no president ever has been able to do stuff that they want to do unless they get the cooperation of Congress, so there’s not much chance that the folks who worry about us becoming a politically socialist state (vs a little more economically socialist, which we all like, in reality, even if we don’t understand that) will come to pass; or Biden, who’s too old, too conservative, and so un- inspiring that there will be too many who won’t bother to vote because it’ll feel like a vote for four more wasted years - just like last time.

Really, people, we’ve made fun of Biden for decades and refused to vote for him because he’s a big goofball with a tongue that trips over itself and no real ideas, so why are we even considering him seriously now? And besides, he sounds like he could be in early stages of senility, or at least, has serious old age memory issues. If he wins, he’ll be better than Trump – anyone who isn’t evil incarnate would be a thousand times better than Trump – but he’ll be boring, uninspiring, divisive because of his unwillingness to do anything new, and stuff that needs to be changed urgently won’t get changed at all, or not enough to make the changes we desperately must make quickly. Let’s face it, Biden’s a liar, too. He may lie as part of telling interesting stories, and if you’re a story teller, a little creativity isn’t a bad thing; but if you’re a politician, it’s a really, really bad habit to have, and besides proving a serious lack of discretion, makes us wonder what is really wrong with this person, after all.

So I’m very irritated. In fact, I’m beyond irritated, because yesterday, someone stole the face masks that I keep in our clinic waiting room during cold and flu season, so patients can protect us and the other patients using the waiting room from sharing their viruses. So now we have no face masks, and like the rest of the world, we can’t get them. 

I have a small handful of patients whose lung health really does put them at risk for all the viruses that have been going around this winter. I happily would have shared a few face masks with them for emergency use. Now I can’t. And now I also have to tell anyone with a cold or flu that they can’t come in for a treatment, or to pick up herbs that could cure them, because we can’t risk them spreading something nasty to all the other patients waiting for treatments for non-contagious issues. And that’s not fair; and it’s not kind; and it’s not necessary. But it’s very greedy. And now I’m very cranky.

I know people are feeling stressed, at risk, and like they’re living in dangerous times. I get it. But we need to use common sense, and we need to be kind, and we need to not give in to terrors that don’t exist in anything but our nightmares.

One patient called me this week and cancelled his appointment indefinitely, because he didn’t want to drive to the Upper Valley for fear of catching something. You can’t catch something by driving to an area, people, the viruses don’t float around outdoors like that. Most people aren’t going to catch this scary virus, but a bunch are going to catch one of the upper respiratory viruses that have been going around for months, some of which have developed into pneumonia  this winter, and those people will freak out, thinking they’ve caught the scary one. 

This winter, like most winters, people have assumed that their “cold” is unimportant, and have gone to work and about their business as if they weren’t sick, cavalierly infecting others and spreading virus hither and yon so that people don’t know how they got sick. Going to work and other public places when you’re sick isn’t a courageous thing, isn’t something to be proud of, isn’t a virtue.  STAY HOME.

Corona virus isn’t, and hasn’t been, the only illness we’re needing to protect ourselves from. So stay home from work if you’re at all sick – whether you have a fever or not – and learn to wash your hands until they’re truly clean, and do it often. Don’t cough all over other people and objects. Treat your colds, don’t ignore them assuming they’ll get better on their own (rest, fluids, extra sleep, good, warm, easy-to-digest food, some herbs that are both anti-viral and anti-bacterial, if you know how to use them). And keep in mind that there are cold colds – no sore throat, lots of clear or white runny snot, no fever, maybe you don’t even feel sick – which can turn into hot colds over a few days, and the symptoms will change, but you’re contagious even while the virus is a cold one. And if you’re tired, or recovering from a winter virus, or are in other ways perhaps immune compromised, don’t go to places where there are lots of people. Be sensible.

Don’t go into a turkey tizzy in a panic that doesn’t make sense.

And don’t piss me off – I’m ugly when I’m really cranky.

For the blog, 5 March 2020: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall