WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND

There’s a character in W.O.Mitchell’s book Who Has Seen the Wind who lives out on the prairie outside of town in a piano box.  I can’t recall anything else about him except that he has been driven mad by the wind.  On days like today I think of him and feel a sense of connection.

I had plans.  This is a busy time of the year for a gardener.  There are trees to trim, weeds to discourage, and as always, there are dandelions to decapitate.  But, here I am, hiding out in the house because a few hours of working out there in yet another day of quasi hurricane winds and I’ll be looking for my own piano box.

I tried.  This morning, after more than an hour long pep talk, I wrote down an itemized list of what I wanted to get done, pulled up my big girl britches, and forced open my south-facing door so I could leave the house.  It took all my physical strength to get the door open and all my emotional fortitude  not to go right back in.

When the wind blows from the south in this yard the only ‘safe’ place is behind the house, so after one lingering glance over to the garden that needs weeding Plan B was invented and I made for the backyard.  I give myself extra credit that I didn’t go back inside to add this new job direction to my list just to give it more legitimacy.

 

I really didn’t have any particular job in mind until I got there.  I just wanted out of the wind, but lo and behold, there was a garden hose to roll up and put away.  People who know me are now laughing out loud.  As a general rule, being neat and tidy with garden hose is not my forte.

 

Also, tucked in behind the house is my small greenhouse, recently emptied of all its greenery.  That’s right: I’ve spent the past week carefully tucking hundreds of bedding plants into their forever homes just to have them threatened with frost for two nights in a row and now this crazy wind.  If I listen carefully I can probably hear their tiny cries for mercy.  The job at the very top of my To Do list was to do a walk around and see how all these babies were doing.  I can’t bring myself to do it.  I put them in the ground and tucked their roots in tight.  I just have to have faith they can hold on to the earth on their own.

But, at least there is a greenhouse to tidy up!  Trays to stack, unused pots to store away, shelves to clear off, floor to sweep; it took me all of 22 minutes.  It would have been less but I was texting with a friend at the same time and had to keep stopping to text her back – thank goodness for small blessings.

 But the work was done so I went back to the house to record these two jobs and then officially stroke them off my list.

It’s not even 11:00 yet, the wind is steady at 36 and gusting to 53; there’s got to be something I could do inside!

Well, besides housework that is.  I’m sick of that.

So, here I sit at my computer, telling you stories.

The dog is following me around looking pathetic because he wants to go out in that wind for a walk.  I’ve explained to him about the piano box thing but he seems unperturbed. 

MY COVID CLUSTER

It’s been months now, apparently.  Isn’t it funny how time slips away?

The year started out pretty much the same as always. But then there were some news stories about a place in China we had never heard of before having a problem with a new disease. ‘No biggie’ we said, ‘that’s far away’, and life went on.  I ordered my garden seeds, researched where we might go for a winter get-a-way, and booked the carpenters and painter to come re-do my kitchen.

Maybe that’s why this COVID thing managed to sneak up on me; I was busy with my kitchen.  We weren’t totally unaware, one of the carpenters was about to go on a cruise and we wondered if that was a good idea, but since we had decided to stay at home this winter travelling seemed like it was someone else’s problem.

Then came the day that I got a phone call from a very agitated daughter ... Did I know they were closing the schools?  Indefinitely?  Like, OMG, what am I going to do!

No.  I did not know that.  What else had been going on while I was ‘hiding’ my husband’s tea in a new cupboard space, and other such nefarious schemes to liven up our marriage? 

It’s all been downhill since then.  We had Optometrist appointments set for two days after the shut down, but of course they were cancelled.  The longer I sit and play on my iPad during this shutdown the more I realize my glasses aren’t up to snuff anymore. 

Also, that same day my husband had finally agreed to an appointment to see about hearing aids (“YOUR TEA IS IN THE NEXT CUPBOARD TO THE RIGHT, DEAR!”)  I’m left worrying that his acceptance that he might need hearing aids was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence and the opportunity has been snatched away by ‘The Covid’.

But, what it might have confiscated in vision and hearing it has been generous in replacing with other things.  Now that the spring weather is here I find myself needing to shimmy and shake my extra COVID-19 pounds into last summer’s shorts.  It can still be done but it’s not comfortable, and I assume it’s not pretty either.  I was blissfully unaware of the extra roll at my waist - I can’t see it because of the COVID-19 hair in my eyes.  A person should just grin and bear it but my teeth are feeling a bit skuzzy too.  There was supposed to be dental hygienist appointment in there somewhere, as well.

We are moving on to the next stage of pandemic living now.  Saskatchewan was the first province to crack open the door and sniff the wind, so to speak.  We are a changed people though:  back in 2019 a Premiere’s political address wouldn’t have had us all glued to our TV screens, but by the end of April we were dying for what he would say.  He milked it for everything it was worth, too.  First he announced he would be making an announcement, and then made us all ‘tune back in tomorrow’.  He knew he had us hanging on his every word.

We are only taking baby steps, and even that didn’t start right away but it has begun.  Golfers can golf.  Fishermen can go fishing.  We don’t have to do our drug deals on the front steps of the pharmacy anymore.

And, if you want a happy, animated conversation with someone, just ask a woman when she managed to book her hair appointment for.  She will be able to tell you the day, date, and time without looking it up.  For instance, mine is June 4^th at 3:00. 

I can’t wait. 

THE PAIN AND THE GAIN

I’m not sure in these days of COVID-19, when there are millions of people stuck inside their city homes trying to keep busy and sane, whether I should even talk about what I’m doing these days.

I am the first to admit that living where I live is a privilege; I’ve always felt that way.  The green space, the privacy, the solitude of rural living is unequalled unless, possibly, you own your own private tropical island.  Truthfully though in all but temperature, it is the same thing.  The COVID social distancing restrictions are pretty easy to satisfy when you live a mile from your closest neighbour.  I have had to modify how many times I run into town, trying to keep it to once a week, and the curbside pick up type shopping is less than satisfying but these things are the only way I am impacted at all.  I don’t have a job I am required to go to, and neither am I out of a paycheck because my business is closed.  I am blessed and I know it.

Even better, now that spring has come, I am busy.

I was always destined to garden; it’s in my very DNA.  There have always been flowers to beautify the yard and vegetables to feed the family.  Once the ground warms up my ‘to do’ list is never done.  It makes for satisfying work, fresh air and exercise, and peaceful sleep – another luxury in these uncertain times.  The sore muscles are collateral damage.

Many news stories lately have been about governments coming up with plans to safely ‘open up’ their economies without re-igniting the virus’ spread.  There are so many things to consider: people need their jobs to pay their bills and feed their families but if this virus hasn’t been sufficiently suppressed we will all end up back in quarantine and have to start over again.  Not only does no one want a second round of this fight, but the experts predict that it will be much harder the second time around.  Having experienced what ‘staying at home’ means people will not be so compliant for a second go – it’s not all about the paycheck, it’s about the sanity.

I have tried to imagine what life would be like in the city with only a small yard to contain the energy of kids who are denied friends to play with and have established that home schooling is not a fun experience – a fact that their parents absolutely agree with.  Of course there is an even worse scenario – apartment living, trying to survive without even the relief valve of a few square feet of grass.

They say that domestic violence rates are going up – one more very distressing implication of life with COVID.

 

In my protected, privileged cocoon of space and financial security I cannot imagine the emotional stress or financial anxiety so many people are going through.

Meanwhile I work in my garden.  For years I’ve been downsizing what I plant but this year the size of my garden will grow.  In the pre-COVID world there never were any worries about sourcing our food but we have all learned that the systems we thought were infallible have shown serious weaknesses.  It’s time to put to use all the information handed down to me from older and wiser gardeners.  Maybe this will mean that I do extra work for nothing and we will have excess to give away, or maybe we will need it all, who knows?  The thing about gardening is that the seeds have to go into the ground now if they are going to do any good.  The pain of the growing season will give us the gain of the harvest.  We have to enter this with faith that the seeds will grow and we will have a plentiful harvest at summer’s end.

It strikes me that this same faith and perseverance is what we need to triumph over COVID-19.  If we don’t stick with the restrictions of social distancing, wearing masks and gloves where necessary, and not gathering in large groups this spring, we can expect a very nasty harvest of more sickness and death and a second round of isolation come fall.

 

For everyone’s sake, let’s do this right the first time.