May 27, 2020

Our table gardens are built and planted! David is understandably proud of his accomplishment, and so am I.

One of the most difficult things about growing older is that we often do know how to do things. Whether we can actually accomplish them, well that’s another matter, entirely.

He and our daughter went to one of the newly opened big box stores to get the lumber—masks in place and hand sanitizer at the ready. He had a list of the wood he needed, and it didn’t take them long to hit the checkout.

From there they went to two other locations—Walmart to buy the soil, peat moss, and fertilizer and the garden area of one of the local grocery stores to get the plants and seed.

We’d had a discussion, the three of us, about the veggies we’d plant. But just because we had that discussion and more or less came to an agreement doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on the veggies they eventually bought.

I was pleased to see the tomato plants—four of them, hale and hardy and one with a flower on it. These, as discussed, he planted in the corners of one of the boxes. Not tucked in close, but within a couple of inches. That way he can staple a stake at the outside, to help support them. Now, in the center of this box was to be a squash plant, two at the most.

During the discussion, we had considered which kind of squash to purchase. I told him whatever kind he wanted. Zucchini, he suggested. I’d said that wouldn’t make sense since I am the only one of the three of us who likes that veggie.

Ah, well…if they do well, I can always make zucchini bread. My husband and daughter like that well enough.

We’d discussed getting both green bell peppers and cucumbers. I reminded them we never seemed to have much luck with the peppers, mainly because of a lack of watering. I did ask him to see if they had any swiss chard, because lately our local grocery store doesn’t get it in anymore. The reason we were given for that change of policy was because, so few people buy it. The store did have collard greens, and maybe there’s a recipe somewhere that will make them taste good, but at this point I’m not sure if I want to bother a second time.

I really do love Swiss chard.

Garden number two has, in order from front to back (rows planted in widthwise), white onions, Swiss chard, green bell peppers, and cucumbers.

There is about ten feet of distance between the zucchini and the cucumbers, and I am hoping it’s enough. Cross pollination is a real thing, my friends. Ask me some day about the time we planted the cucumbers close to the watermelon in our big old country veggie garden. Here’s the bottom line of that adventure. The cucumbers were plump and good; the watermelon tasted like cucumbers, sort of.

The cucumbers in the back of that second garden, that was good, I said to my husband. A good distance from the other squash. He pointed to the black metal piece of frame, late of our last gazebo, that he has tacked to the high, wooden fence. He nodded and said, “I put them there so that they could grow up the trellis.”

Okay. I nodded. I said, “it’ll work, as long as the cucumbers don’t get too big and heavy.” Roses they are not. String beans, they are not. But we’ll see.

The third garden has the seeds: beans—green, yellow, and new kind that grows to be purple but turns a dark green when cooked. He also has planted carrots, and beets.

 And while we have no idea how this will pan out, he’s already looking forward to next year. He plans to add one more table garden, the lap pool of table gardens, if you will. It will be longer and about a third of the width of what he has now, as well as twice the depth.

He reasons it will make a good potato garden. If it’s deep enough, and with the drainage these boxes have, I can’t see any reason why not.

I know my husband well. He’s already planning a feast of real baby potatoes. 

Love,
Morgan

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

May 20, 2020

I’m finding it enormously interesting and not just a little reassuring that I am hearing people much younger than me, who are staying-at-home, confess that they lose track of what day it is.

It really is easy, when you’re retired, to let the names of the days go. There’s not much to distinguish one from another. When we worked, there was the weekend, and then the days we had to work to get to it. After I no longer left the house to work, I said that now, I have six Saturdays and a Sunday. But at this point, I just don’t seem to have enough time, period.

We’ve had a lot of rain and cool winds the last couple of weeks, and my legs have had enough of that. This morning, as I write this, the sun is shining and it’s 57 degrees outside. Could this be the arrival of spring-like temperatures at last? I can only hope.

David has begun to build our table gardens. He’s got the three frames almost completely built. Now comes the part where he has to build the bottoms. There’s netting involved—the bottom of each table garden is wood slats, with netting on top. The netting will keep the soil in while letting the water drip down and away. He has some netting that he’s planning to use. It’s what we refer to as ginseng cloth. If you’ve ever passed fields of ginseng you know what I mean—that black screen-like material that the growers suspend above the crop.

We’re still working on deciding about which vegetables we’re going grow. I he’s still planning to grow squash, though he hasn’t decided what kind. Tomatoes are in, I know that. So, too, is Swiss Chard. Green beans are also a given. I believe he was thinking two vegetables for each garden, so that leaves us with two more to decide upon. We’re both really hoping this works out for us. We do miss the convenience of fresh vegetables in the summer and early fall.

Aside from the gastronomic advantage of planting a garden, there’s the sense of accomplishment one can only get from growing things. Humans have grown plants for centuries. I think there’s something deep within us that hearkens back to our earliest days, that can only find expression of when we get our fingers in the soil.

As humans, our connection to the soil of our planet is as much spiritual as it is physical.

The number of people in this county who have tested positive for the virus and are not in hospital remains low—there are currently 3. So far, we’ve lost three souls here, and while the loss of even one is a tragedy, I am grateful that we’ve not lost hundreds or even thousands here in our area of the world. As of yesterday, our country has a death toll of 5,912. Our entire population is 37.5 million. People-wise, we’re a smaller country. California has more people than we do.

Since our numbers remain low here, I’ve decided to head out to the grocery store this week. David has already ventured out with our daughter a couple of times. I wasn’t surprised that he caved first. He’s always liked to go out and about. For me, that hasn’t been a thing that I’ve clung to. The last decade has found me coping with gallbladder disease before I had it removed and then increasing arthritic pain. Neither of those afflictions are conducive to going out anywhere.

I feel okay with the decision to go out to the grocery store, but then again, that could change once I’m out there. This is a personal decision that everyone has to make. Of course, I will be taking all precautions. I’ll be wearing a mask, and gloves, and will keep my distance from others.

I doubt I’ll be going out to a restaurant right away, once they do open. We might call in an order and then pick it up. But for myself, I’m going to take baby steps. I’m also going to keep my eye on whether or not the case count in this area goes up, once things begin to open more. It’s been proven that one person infected and asymptomatic can infect dozens. That puts a degree of uncertainty in every situation, at least for the time being.

Am I afraid that I might get the virus, or get it and unknowingly pass it on? Of course, I am. I have been throughout this pandemic.

The way I see it, I’d be a damn fool not to be.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

May 13, 2020

I want to report for the record that on May 8, 2020, as we were on the porch in the morning looking out…there were some snow particles floating down from above.

Snow particles, on May 8, 2020.

That same day, May 8, our nighttime temperature just before midnight was 28 Fahrenheit—and the weather network added that it “felt like” 18.

And on the following day, it snowed. Not that the white stuff accumulated, because it didn’t. But it was just a little depressing to look out the living room window and see a snow squall in progress. We had a few of those on Saturday, and each time there were entire seconds when the snow was falling so thick and fast, it cut visibility noticeably. And yes, it felt very cold—likely colder than it actually was.

The weather did give us a break on Sunday, for Mother’s Day, and that was a blessing because I was looking forward to seeing some members of my family. They were coming by for a visit—us on the porch, them on the sidewalk. I hadn’t seen any of them for two months. I was so grateful they came to visit. It was joyful and sad at the same time. However, I choose to cling to the joyful. I will hug them again.

I should probably admit that in years past, on the Victoria Day weekend which this year is May 16 through 18, it has indeed snowed. It has snowed quite convincingly. Not so much after that date, but definitely up to and on that occasion. The weekend, which some consider the first long weekend of the summer season, is traditionally a weekend for camping, and for those of a much younger age, partying. Our Victoria Day always falls on the Monday before the U.S.’s Memorial Day.

Victoria Day is also a day for fireworks. In fact, it used to be the only day for fireworks we had when I was younger. In those days, apparently, celebrating the country’s birthday of July 1st wasn’t considered a significant enough reason for fireworks.

So far, this spring is a bit cooler and damper than I like, but it is what it is. There are flowers in my garden—daffodils, hyacinths and narcissus. The tulips will bloom soon, the lilacs have tiny leaves, and the singular shoots of the lilies-of-the-valley are reaching high.

I really hope this year the lilacs and those little lilies bloom at the same time. I feel as if I really need that precious scent again this year.

We continue to stay home here in my neck of the woods. The actual active test-confirmed cases of the coronavirus not hospitalized in our county are 4. I suppose one could say, well, fine, it’s time to get back to normal. I know some people are trying to do just that and, except for the fact that most of the stores, and all of the malls, restaurants, bars and theaters are still closed, have succeeded. They’re getting together with friends, some in homes, some in parks, some at beaches. It is happening here, but not nearly so much as in the United States.

I have seen Benjamin Franklin’s quote about the penalty that is deserved if one surrenders liberty for safety used by many who are, like children, protesting being at home during this pandemic. Again, as with the quote from Patrick Henry that I cited previously, I am not at all certain the safety that Mr. Franklin was referring to was keeping oneself and others safe from a global pandemic. He doesn’t appear to have been a man who would celebrate selfishness. And friends, it is nothing but selfish to insist on going out and mingling in large gatherings when the result of your actions may be to make others sick, possibly to the point of death.

Most people who contract this novel coronavirus are asymptomatic. Unless they get tested, they don’t know they have it. But for those people, just with like any disease, if you have it you can pass it—and the ones you pass it to may not be as fortunate as you to be asymptomatic.

I think more likely Franklin was referring to ceding liberty to the state and making yourself a de facto servant with no rights, not just staying in your house, or wearing masks in public while maintaining physical distance from others.

I want to shake these people, these protesters. Are you prisoners held in chains? Have you lost your right to vote and your citizenship? For those of you grumbling because you have been asked to stay home in order to save lives, I give you this analogy.

If there was an active shooter on your street, and the police told you to shelter in place, would you beat your chest, scream, “No, I will not obey! Give me liberty or give me death!” and then run out into the street, dragging your grandmother behind you, in order to provide a couple of prime targets for the gunman?

Put that way, it’s a ridiculous question, isn’t it? Your answer to the above would be not just no, but hell, no. Point made.

Everyone, most definitely including yours truly, is anxious for this to be over, so that life can get back to normal. I do know this will be over. I do know we will get back to normal.

What I just don’t know, is what our new normal is going to look like.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

May 6, 2020

We live in a part of the province of Ontario, Canada, called Brant County. In area, Brant County (including my town, a couple of rural communities and the city of Brantford) stretches out to about 325 square miles, with a combined population of about 140,000. And in this area and among this population there are currently 5 people hospitalized with Covid-19 and 16 people self-isolating at home, as of yesterday’s statistics.

Most people hereabouts have been heeding the advice to stay home. David caved over this past weekend and went to the grocery store with our daughter. He had his own cart and wore a mask and gloves. And when they got home, the first thing they both did was to wash their hands.

I have no pressing need to socialize with other people. I am perfectly content to stay home. I have been in quarantine mode for 53 days as of today. There are two exceptions to that isolation. The first was the fifteen-minute scooter ride I took a few weeks ago, just a quiet ride around the neighborhood. I didn’t come any closer than ten feet to another person (well, except David, who was riding with me). The second will happen shortly. I have to go and get my quarterly blood work done at the community lab this morning, in advance of my doctor’s appointment tomorrow. An appointment that will be held over the telephone, and not in person. Being diabetic, I go every three months to see the doctor; under the circumstances, that won’t be a physical visit this time. They are conserving their PPE for those people who need to be seen. I have no objections to that policy.

For me, my “appointment”, usually is a matter of checking my labs, which they will receive tomorrow morning, and their recording my medications, issuing prescriptions where necessary. I will count the number of pills I have for each medication and let them know if there are any refills pending. Since those medications are all right here in a baggie in my office, that’s easy enough for me to do.

My point is, for the most part in this area, we are all doing what we can to reduce the spread of one of the most transmittable diseases in modern history. I think it would be different if everyone who had the disease displayed symptoms. But they don’t and can therefore be unwittingly spreading this novel coronavirus to others.

I have been completely flummoxed by the protesters taking to the streets—mostly in the United States but sadly, a few here in Canada. Those who feel their liberty has been impugned by the necessary stay-at-home orders, devised to keep everyone safe. Some held signs that read, “give me liberty or give me death”. I seriously don’t believe that Patrick Henry would consider temporary stay-ah-home and social distancing restrictions imposed upon him to be worthy of that line. He would have heard of the plague, if he hadn’t experienced it. He very likely would have complied.

Give me liberty or give me death, indeed.

Friends, that just tripped my switch. What would I say to these common-sense deprived people? Why, I’d say this: You see, protesters, I would be fine with that. You want to take the chance of dying? Go for it, baby. But the problem, you see, is you could get the disease without having any symptoms, and then pass it on to someone who’s not a protester, who’s just, you know, hanging home and trying to be safe. What you’re really saying with that sign is, in fact: “give me liberty and give my mother death”. Or father, or child, or wife, or whomever has the misfortune of being close to you.

This kind of behavior in society isn’t new at all, though this may be a unique rendition. It isn’t necessarily born of these times in which we live, either. There have always been stupid people willing to do stupid things for stupid reasons. 

Maybe that’s a little harsh. Maybe this behavior doesn’t hearken so much to stupidity, as it does to immaturity. I’m reminded of young children sent to their rooms for a time out. Or teenagers grounded for some infraction or another. I can see them stomping their feet and having little hissy fits. They’re instructed to do something for their own good and they throw themselves on the floor and kick their feet and cry out, “I don’t want to, I don’t want to!”

When I was younger there was an expression my mother would use, and I am reminded of it in this instance. I consider it a cliché of sorts because it’s been around even longer than from when I was a child, and it certainly applies, in my opinion, to these circumstances.

All those people gathering in large crowds to protest their state government’s dedication to the protection of their lives and the lives of their loved ones? Why, they are doing nothing more than cutting off their own noses to spite their faces. 

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

April 29, 2020

David and I have made a decision, and I have to tell you, the next couple of months are going to be interesting.

You may recall that a few years ago we were weighing our options, with respect to our back yard. Do we install a pool? We decided against that in the end, because it would really limit the back yard space that was available for our Mr. Tuffy. There is not much flat yard between our back door and the hill as it is. He was a small dog and my, did he ever love running laps! His son and daughter love doing that as much as he did. They also like to dig holes that David keeps filling in, but that’s another story.

So at that time, we installed a “gazebo”, a metal frame and canvas one, and we enjoyed that for several years. We even replaced the original gazebo with a slightly bigger one.

Now, however, we’re at a new decision point for our back yard. Do we replace the second gazebo with a third, or do something different? Yes, it’s something different we’ve decided upon, and something that has been inspired by the times we are in.

When we were a young married couple, and in the aftermath of my mother’s death, we moved into her house, which came with a piece of property that was three-quarters of an acre in size. My mother’s property featured five flower beds in the front yard, and one really large vegetable garden in the back yard.

How large, you may ask? Large enough that every spring, we had a neighbor who was a farmer come on his tractor to plow and then a few days later disc the garden so that it was ready for us to plant. That house sat on land that was atop the Niagara Escarpment. It was a heavy limestone area, and the topsoil layer wasn’t all that deep. We even had a limestone quarry (yes, the quarry where David worked for 39 ½ years) as one of our “neighbors”.

We used joke that each year that garden yielded us a good crop of rocks. It really wasn’t a joke, as it did just that. Working that thing we were forever tossing rocks out to sit at the base of the fence. But we did grow more than rocks. We had green and yellow beans, green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, different types of squash, radishes, Swiss chard, carrots, corn…the only things David and I never grew were lettuce and cauliflower.

 We loved that garden, and it helped to feed our family. We made pickles and relish from the cucumbers each year, chili sauce from the tomatoes—plus we froze a lot of tomatoes, whole, and used them to make sauces. We froze beans and broccoli and anything else we could manage.

And oh, the luxury of walking down to the garden to pick a tomato for a sandwich at lunch time—or some beans for supper! Each August while we had that garden we would enjoy a harvest meal—a supper that was all fresh picked or dug up veggies, and my goodness, how tasty that was!

We’re a lot older now, the two of us, and no longer able to get down to weed and work a garden the way we used to. And that brings us to the decision we’ve made. We’ve found “specs” to build garden boxes—boxes that will be about waist height and will measure, box size, two foot by four foot. The plan at the moment is to build three of them and put them where the gazebo used to be.

We’ve been trying to decide what veggies we’ll grow. Beans and tomatoes, for certain. If we have an entire box with beans, that should yield us enough to freeze at least a few. We won’t have the abundance that our old garden gave us, of course. I think the real benefit will be more psychological than anything else.

The latest headlines are that the food supply chain may be breaking. None of us has any idea how long it will take for it to be fixed. In the interim, none of us wants to go hungry. We’re older now and can’t do much about that. We have been picking up a few extra cans of veggies and meat as we shop. Canned goods will last a good couple of years. So that’s one thing we’re doing to protect ourselves.

By building and then cultivating a few table gardens we’ll not only be providing ourselves with some food. We’ll be doing something that will make us feel that we have some measure of control over the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

A little bit of control can go a long way toward soothing the id, if not the ego. 

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

April 22, 2020

It’s hard not to think about what’s happening in the world, isn’t it? David and I watch a fair bit of news, and sometimes I have to reach for a tissue. We are both well, and safe. It’s been more than a month since I left the house, and I’m okay with that. When I think of what so many are dealing with, how could I complain about staying home?

And while I believe that it might be healthier in the long run for me to perhaps curtail some of the news reports I’m watching, I feel like doing so would be a kind of betrayal. People are suffering, and I’m not. The least I can do is bear witness.

So I watch, and sometimes I weep. I weep for so many people, so very many people who are sick with a disease we’d none of us ever heard of before. I weep that too many of them are dying and too many more will die.

This is such a devastating virus.

I chatted online about a week or so ago with a woman I’ve been friends with since grade school. I sent her a note, just checking up to see how she was doing. She lives in another province, one that doesn’t have near as many cases of Covid-19 as my own province does.

She said, “never did I ever think that I would see something like this in my lifetime.” I understood, because I’d felt the same way. And then she said that it made her appreciate how lucky we are to not have had to deal with this earlier in life. She asked if I could imagine having to do this when we were in our teens or our twenties.

I really hadn’t thought about that before, but her words stayed with me. She’s my age and that wasn’t a sentiment one might expect from a senior, but I get it, and I know she was thinking on more than one level.

We are lucky to have lived so many years of our lives without ever having such a threat hanging over our heads. Our “prime of life” years were lived without any real way-of-life changing events touching us personally when we had so much of our lives ahead of us. We are lucky because we didn’t have to be the parents of a young child or children and dealing with this kind of a threat. To be fearful for your babies’ safety is the hell that parents endure regardless. How much worse would it have been for us, and our babies, facing this?

Well, I guess I should qualify that and say my first baby is 48 now and I still worry about him, so there it is.

As for quarantining with kids? I don’t know how I would have fared with all of us at home, together, without the option of being apart except for bedtime. And much as I love my kids, they could be a challenge, let me tell you. I doubt any of us would have escaped with our sanity still intact.

But as I think of it, I know that I feel lucky in another way right now. Being older means I have, at least theoretically, more patience. Yes, this is a trying time, but being bored was never one of my afflictions. I’ve always been able to find something to do. And that theoretical patience means that I understand that if we stay at home and do what the medical experts are urging, we’ll get through this.

I choose to believe that. We will get through this, together.

In the meantime, my heart aches and I weep for those people who die without their loved ones by their sides—and those who have to watch their loved ones die from a distance. My heart aches and I weep hearing the pain-filled video diaries of so many front-line medical personnel who have found themselves in the position of being soldiers in a war. Women and men who fight like hell to save people and sometimes end up in those end-of-life moments. Women and men who are either holding hands or holding iPads, or both for their patients who are at those end of life moments.

This is such a devastating virus. We will get through it, and it will change us. It has changed us. Life, as we knew it is no more.

And while I’m patient enough to stay home until the threat subsides, I don’t know if I’m patient enough to accept whatever the hell kind of new “normal” we will eventually end up with.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

April 15, 2020

I hope, as much as possible, that you all had a good Easter.

Here in the Ashbury household, we managed a feast, of sorts. My daughter does all the shopping now, and she was able to get a bone-in-ham during her last trip out. She also picked up a few yams, because in our family you really can’t have the ham without the yam. I had wanted Brussels sprouts too, because that is one veggie the entire family likes. I did have some frozen ones and decided they would do, so I called the planning done.

Until Saturday, when our second daughter texted and asked if I needed anything at the grocery store, since she was going to get her groceries. I thanked her, and she dropped off those fresh sprouts a couple of hours later.

Anymore when we get one of those bone-in-hams, we don’t put the whole thing in the oven. First, when you purchase a large ham, the kind of which they have at our grocery store, it’s already cooked. Now there is usually more meat on one of those things than we can eat in one sitting, so we cut the whole thing up on the day we plan to have the main meal. I place the pieces we want to heat for supper in a casserole dish. We set aside some to fry up for a breakfast in the week to come, and then we designate a good portion for what the family has dubbed “ham and pickle”.

It's not really a salad, though I have seen something similar sold at the market under the name of “meat salad”. Our variation is cubed ham and enough pieces of sweet mixed pickles for accented flavor (I use the green pickles and never the cauliflower). They go into the food chopper and come out…chopped. Putting them in a bowl, I stir to make sure the pickle bits are mixed evenly then add some mayonnaise, and mix that in as well and presto, you have a meat spread for sandwiches. You can use those small dinner hams, too, but it doesn’t taste quite as good as it does when I use the bone-in ham.

We have a bowl of that in the fridge right now, and I know it won’t last long. The rest of that ham, except for 2 pieces my daughter hid away to fry up for breakfast one day this week, is a fond memory. It fed the three of us, as well as our second daughter and her son who is our grandson.

Again, we did the social distancing “pass of the ready to heat and eat food” from us to her. That way we can talk face to face for a few moments even if we can’t hug.

I was trying to figure out how long David and I have been “staying at home”. I think that by the time the Premier of our province instituted a state of emergency proclamation (closing all non-essential businesses) on March 17th, we’d given up going to the grocery store. Our pharmacy delivers, so that covers just about everything except the doctor. My next appointment is early May. When that week arrives, I’ll go to the lab on Monday and the doctor on Thursday and that will be my first excursions since the second week of March.

As of today, we’ve been home for 29 days. The Premier is asking the legislature to extend the emergency proclamation another 28 days, to June 2. Here in Ontario, there is no official “stay at home” order, although the Premier has the legal authority to issue one. He’s reluctant, he says, because it feels heavy handed. He is threatening fines for those who insist on trying to congregate in the area’s parks. We’ll see how it goes but I’m with him: I don’t understand what people aren’t getting about this situation, either. You can have the virus and suffer no symptoms whatsoever, but you can spread it to me, who will. Seems easy enough. Stay home.

We feel very lucky, David and I. Despite our being seniors and being considered to be among the “most vulnerable” for this disease, staying home hasn’t been especially hard for us. As you grow older you understand that while you may not have any control over the events that happen around you or even to you, you have complete control over the way you react to those events.

I know that how I react to what happens to me, and to life in general, is my choice, my decision. I can’t rightly complain about having to “stay home”. It would be beyond silly for me to complain about not being able to go out anywhere when I really didn’t care to do so very much before Covid-19, anyway.

I do miss hugging my loved ones, but I will hug them again. I think of a couple of friends whose oldest son and his family lived in Dubai for several years. It was a long time between hugs for them and that for them was normal.

I keep in touch with our son and his family via text. One of our nephews and his wife sent us a delightful “snap chat” Happy Easter message and that made us smile. I routinely text my grandchildren and their spouses, just to check in.

Most of us have wonderful technology at our fingertips in this day and age. So please, don’t complain about not being able to do the things you want to do with your loved ones. Stay in touch and up to date with them using the tools you have. Let them know you love them.

And stay at home now so that y’all will be alive later to have yourselves a huge hug fest.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury