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| Fritillaria and Heart-leafed Bergenia |
It’s May. Oh, Joy. It’s almost half-way through May, and
every other time I look out the window, it’s snowing like crazy.
If there’s one thing we all should have learned during the
last months of Covid-19 stay-at-home orders and hand sanitizing and face
masking – besides that we should do whatever’s necessary to ensure that the
idiot in the White House and his merry band of unmasked marauders and
ass-kissing toadies doesn’t get re-elected and none of them ever show their
faces in the political arena again - it’s that nothing is predictable, even the
things that are eminently predictable.
Except that everything is
predictable, and the first thing we can definitely count on is that what’s most
predictable is that we won’t do anything – anything
– about most of the stuff we can predict, and the little we do attempt to
do will be completely inadequate.
Now that we’ve seen the longest number of consecutive weeks
in years without a school gun shooting, will we do something to ensure that even
after schools are back in session, that trend continues – something sensible,
like eliminate guns? No, of course we won’t.
Now that we’ve seen the disaster that ensues when we’ve stupidly
stuffed our government full of self-centered, foolish, ignorant people and a
real disaster attacks us, will we do something to correct that problem with
vigor and alacrity? Unlikely.
Will we do something speedily to end the horror-show this
current disaster is creating amongst the people on the border whom we’ve locked
up for no good reason? No, we don’t even talk about them anymore.
Will we do something to fix our clearly broken healthcare
system? Goodness, no, that would cost money.
Will we do something to fix the grossly unequal situations
of people with more money than anyone should have and those with not enough
money to feed and house themselves? Horrors, no.
Will we reconsider how and why we jail people? No.
Will we address the inequality of blacks
and people of color in the legal, medical, educational, and financial systems?
No.
Will we do something fast and furious to save our planet?
No, no, no! It would ruin business!
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| Calla Lily - inside |
Will we change any of the obvious injustices and scary
things we’re doing that might make living for the next 30 or more years
anything but a very frightening proposition?
Don’t count on it.
Please prove me wrong. I’d love to be wrong. I’d love to
stop saying, almost daily, “I’m glad I’m 64 and not 24!”
Let’s look at something else that’s predictably
unpredictable: New England weather, and my garden – about which I don’t expect
you to do anything in particular.
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| Early April's peas |
The peas and fava beans I planted in an excess of enthusiasm
on a 60-degree day at the beginning of April did actually germinate, and as of
yesterday, were an inch or so high. The onion bulbs I planted about then are,
some of them, also showing some green sprouting signs. We got snow, instead of
a freeze, so I’m expecting that those, and the garlic, and the Egyptian onions
that have been well up and growing beautifully since before my pea and fava
experiment will be fine. I don’t think today’s winter weather will hurt the
leeks and onion plants I put in a week ago; and it will surely not damage the
pea, and fava, and parsnip, and lettuce, and broccoli raab, and turnip, and
carrot seeds, and the shallot bulbs I planted last weekend – those haven’t even
begun to germinate at this point, though they’re surely starting to think about
it in their cold beds.
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| New Asparagus - yes, a purple variety! |
The plants that have been up for awhile – poppies, Johnny-jump-ups,
Blue-eyed Mary, tulips, alliums, lilies, irises and so forth have already
experienced a version of this crappy weather, so I’m not expecting them to be
hurt, tho’ I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the tulip buds, which are not
yet open, don’t get zapped. Same for the new peach trees – these are supposed
to be a frost resistant variety, so we’ll
see. The leaves aren’t out on any trees here, yet, except the weeping willow
down the street, so I’m not too worried. The new asparagus newly up - that I am worried about!
If – if – it warms
up later this week, I have a short brick walk to put into the edge of one
garden bed, and potatoes to plant, and beets and carrots to seed. It’s still
too cold to put in green beans or summer squash seed, even under cloches; or
corn or shell beans or winter squashes or scarlet runner beans or any of the
other warm-weather seeds, and definitely too cold, by weeks, to put out tomato
and pepper plants. I can plant some lettuce seed now; the chives are well-grown
and lovely, the tarragon is up in its protected cement-block bed, and I’m
seeing some signs of the self-seeded dill and California poppies.
No signs yet of the perennials I put in last fall, including
one patch of tulips that should have come up by now. There are a few daffodils
from that batch that are barely up, this last week, so I’m giving the tulips
another week, then I’m going to dig up that bed to see if some winter critter
used it for below-snow dining. I did find one of the iris roots I’d planted on
top of the ground the other day – someone dug it up and kicked it out, and I
expect it’s a goner, though I put it below ground again, just in case. Other
irises, and poppies, and pincushion plants, and lilies, and astilbe, and phlox,
and something called an Orange Glory plant are amongst the missing. It’s
probably still too cold for some of them, but I’m worried about most of them.
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| Species Tulip; I'm the shadow! |
Will they come up eventually? I dunno.
Will the mallard pair that’s been visiting our kitchen pond
decide to build a nest there? I dunno.
Will we have a too-cold summer, will there be tomatoes, will
the new peach trees thrive? I dunno.
Will I ever get an unemployment check? Totally
unpredictable, like all of the above.
I’m still waiting for the state unemployment office to
decide to send me checks – apparently being a self-employed person who isn’t
incorporated or in any other way registered with the state as a business is
making them confused, since I treat patients in NH and VT, and so they’re just
ignoring my application – 6 weeks now and counting. I’m still seeing only a very
few patients with pain or other conditions that can’t wait; we mask up, I swab
down the office with disinfectant before and after, we keep fingers crossed and
hands washed and hope for the best, and that will continue for the indefinite
future, so the state’s inability to make a decision has long since worn thin.
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| Johnny-Jump-Ups; from plants I planted years ago, still proliferating |
But while we’re still going out masked and Purelled, there
is one thing we can all do, and it’s important. Put on your mask and go stand
in front of a mirror. Now, practice smiling with your eyes. The people we meet
can’t see us smile with our masks on, and everyone we meet needs to be smiled
at, especially in our awful times. A little practice, and you’ll get it – and you’ll
start to change the world.
And that’s totally predictable.
For the blog, 9 May
2020
All photos Deb
Marshall
