September 23, 2020
Autumn officially arrived yesterday morning. We felt that it had actually arrived several days before when we welcomed cooler temperatures to our area. I don’t care for extremes in temperatures anymore. I was never fond of extreme cold, but I used to not mind the heat so much. The last few years, however, rather than finding the heat comforting, the humid high temperatures of summer seem to aggravate my arthritis just as much as the wet damp of fall and icy cold of winter do.
I’m afraid I’ve turned into one of those clichéd humans who is never happy, no matter the weather. I hate being that person, but I won’t deny that I am.
Tomatoes and green peppers and beans are still growing, but they’ve slowed. David cleared out some of the vegetation that was just growing in the gardens but not producing anything. We’ll catch a break if the first few frosts are light. Since the gardens are not at ground level (they’re about three feet up), there’s a chance those first few chills won’t kill the veggie plants still producing.
In our part of the world, in our small part of Southern Ontario, we’ve had another surge in the number of virus cases, which doesn’t surprise anyone here. And I’m not complaining, because here in this county of Brant, and adding in the City of Brantford which is in the middle of the county and covered by the same Health unit, we have a population of 138,866 and 10 current cases of Covid 19. For those of you paying attention, in a previous essay I had cited the population as being 36,707. That’s the county, not the city. The city’s population is over 134,000. So therefore, mea culpa, I stand corrected.
Surges of the virus are relative, of course. We take this pandemic very seriously here. The premier of Ontario has announced new restrictions on private gatherings. Toronto especially has seen a real spike in cases lately, and he is prepared to do what has to be done in order to try and mitigate the spread. The limit now for private gatherings is 10 people inside, 25 outside. The fines for violation are hefty: a maximum of $10,000 for the organizers, and $750.00 for each of those attending.
David and I are both grateful for the Premier’s willingness to put the brakes on. Interestingly enough, this is a man we weren’t fans of before the pandemic. But for some people, events happen that bring out the leader in them; Premier Ford has done a good job, cooperating with the federal government (different political party), and seeing to it that the people under his aegis are taken care of.
David and I continue to remain very cautious in our “outings”. Face masks and hand washing and social distancing and yes, hand sanitizer as well. We go to the grocery store, and the market garden store, and sometimes, the pharmacy. We have not yet eaten out a restaurant, nor do we plan to in the foreseeable future. We have not objections to drive-through take-out, and we also have had a few things delivered.
Some things are just more important than going out.
Our second daughter is a nurse, and our daughter is a PSW (nurse’s aid). Our daughter, Jennifer, doesn’t have any contact with persons who’ve contracted Covid 19. All her clients are screened on an ongoing basis, and if there is a concern, those clients are not seen until the concern is cleared up.
Our second daughter mainly works on a forensic psychiatric ward, so she doesn’t deal with patients who have the virus, either. But she went for a Covid test on Monday, as she has been teaching medical students for the last week, and awoke on Monday not feeling well—sore throat and a runny nose. Fortunately, she tested negative. Sometimes cold symptoms mean you only have a cold.
We were ready to raise the drawbridge, as it were, if she had tested positive. We’ve done that before. Early last month our daughter learned that her former daughter-in-law had gone to a large weekend party. As a result, Jennifer denied herself time with her grandchildren. She monitored the situation and it was only after about a month that she spent time with her grandchildren again. As our Jenny has said, she has a responsibility to protect not only herself and us, but her clients as well. Most of them are older than we are, and with more risk factors.
Yes, we here in the Ashbury household take the Pandemic seriously. We understand that it is real—that we are not nearly important enough in the scheme of the world—us and our friends and our community—for the entire world to try and pull one over on us for unnatural and undefined purposes.
Nope, it’s just a real pandemic and our job is to do all we can to ensure that we do not get the disease and thereby spread it to anybody else. Not a terribly sexy goal in life, but it is reality—something none of us would ever have believed would one day become a shrinking resource.
Belief in reality, that is.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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