The Madness Continues

Yes, I know we're in the midst of a pandemic. Yes, I know these are unprecedented times for humanity. Yes, I know everything is scary and unpredictable but really, people, can't we behave with some decency towards our fellows?

I'm driven to ask this because of the appalling way some people are behaving and it seems to be a fairly international problem. There have been reports in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US - it's probably happening elsewhere as well but these are the places I have contacts in - of city dwellers heading out to small country towns (places with few residents and only one relatively small supermarket or convenience store) and buying up much of the stock on the shelves. These vultures - though to call them that is pretty insulting to vultures since they only take what is left over unlike these greedy invaders - then presumably head back home well equipped to last out the apocalypse - which doesn't even seem likely to happen - leaving the resident population with limited or no supplies of food and other necessities. Given people in these areas often make only one shopping trip a week or even less frequently if, for example, they live on outlying farms and have to travel considerable distances to get  supplies, the consequences of this selfishness are obvious. These are people like my niece who has to undertake an 80 km round trip to do a grocery shop for her family and retired folk who can't drive far and have no access to public transport so rely on the local shop to provide their needs.

How anyone can justify this sort of behaviour I find hard to fathom. Talking about Australia since that's the place I have the most direct knowledge of it's even more bizarre. We produce the bulk of our food here. We even export food worldwide for heaven's sake. So why would you think for one moment that you need to stockpile at the cost of others? Yes, the shelves are currently bare of staples but that's not because we don't have enough food. It's because people keep stripping the shelves and it takes time for fresh supplies to get to the shops. Australia is a vast country and if you live say in Western Australia and the major food supplies come from somewhere on the eastern sea board it will take anything up to a week or more for them to reach out into rural areas.

I have to agree with our Prime Minister on this. He said 'Just stop it. ' and, honestly, that's what everyone should do.

In A Time Of Trouble

it's nice to see something hopeful and pretty like this, don't you think.

Here's the story. A couple of months ago I was gifted with a pot of lisianthus in full bloom. It was like a glorious growing bouquet of flowers that lasted for around ten days inside on a fairly bright lit table. 

The instruction card that came with them said if you put them outside in a sheltered position once they ceased flowering they would bloom again so I found a spot among the mint pots and watered them diligently and waited - and waited. Nothing. I was losing hope but I'm never one to give up on what I can grow - I was told thirty years ago that you can't grow ginger here and I've been growing and harvesting it ever since - so I kept on watering the pot every time I watered the mints. And today I got my reward. Two blossoms out and more on the way. Lovely, aren't they.

Why Are People Going Nuts?

When I started my last post on putting together an emergency kit the COVID 19 virus was just a bit of bad news from China and had nothing whatever to do with my decision to get my household organised in the case of an emergency. As I said in that post I was concerned about bushfires and storms. Now everything has changed and the simple steps I intended to work through as far as making us somewhat more self-sufficient have become much more difficult in a matter of days. This is not because of the virus itself I should add but because of how people are panicking as it makes its way across the planet.

I feel as if the world has pretty much gone crazy in some ways since China locked down the whole of Wuhan. As the magnitude of the effects of the virus became clear we could see that this wasn't going to be something limited to just there. At some point it was going to break out of the quarantined area and spread world wide. The only question was when this would happen. Wisely governments everywhere started to put their pandemic plans into effect. The experts spoke up telling us to take sensible precautions - like preparing a small stockpile of food and household essentials in case you end up being quarantined for several weeks or you fall ill and can't get to the shops. Don't panic, they said, just add a few extras to your shopping every time you go, items like canned or dried food that you'd use normally. Add in tissues and paracetamol in case you do come down with the virus, oh, and don't forget things like toilet paper, they said.

And that's when much of Australia went nuts. Did they do as the experts suggested and not panic buy? Of course not. You can see why to some degree. If like many on low incomes you haven't extra food and other things stockpiled you might well feel a little vulnerable but really it's turned to the bizarre. Within a very short time some items started disappearing from the shop shelves and you'll probably be as puzzled I am as to what one item is causing stand up fights in some shops with one case of someone drawing a knife to defend their trolley full of treasure.

It's toilet paper. That's right. People are so worried about not having enough toilet paper that they have been literally forming crowds at shop entrances before opening time and crawling under the doors as they lift so they can snaffle packs of it. It's been so bad that shops have had to impose limits on how much toilet paper you can buy at one time and some customers are not happy. Scuffles have broken out in several places as shoppers battle for some of the precious stuff and some of those who got in early and bulk bought are now making a killing by selling it at inflated prices.

It leaves me completely bemused. A few other things disappeared from the shelves pretty quickly - hand sanitiser for one which actually makes some sense. Five kilogram bags of rice and pasta along with baked beans were in short supply for a day or so and apparently canned tomatoes were recently on the list of must haves with shelves of them being stripped. The panic choices in many ways seemed quite random. For instance, beside the empty baked bean area you'd find shelves stocked with a large and apparently untouched assortment of other vegetables and meals like chunky soups and stews in cans which would seem to be an equally good choice if you think you're going to need survival supplies.

Despite all this for the most part the shops were restocked very quickly and when we did our weekly shopping yesterday there were no bare shelves anywhere except in the toilet paper and paper towel aisles. Even the baked beans had been restocked.

The whole debacle has been ridiculous and I hate to think how long it's going to take everyone to use this totally unnecessary stockpile of toilet paper - oh, and baked beans.

Harvest

This basket of goodies came out of my veggie garden - oh, and the reason the side of the basket is missing is because my cat had his head over it and that didn't seem relevant to this post although I'm sure he would have thought it was. As I've mentioned before - or perhaps that should be moaned about before - the summer vegetables have generally not been great this year thanks to rats, disease and some as yet unknown bug which denuded whole swathes of plants of their leaves and left only forlorn sticks. The capsicums, basil and cherry tomatoes were the few exceptions. The tomatoes have just about finished now but the basil and capsicums are still going strong which brings me to these beauties.

With too many to eat at once - although a few have been kept to eat fresh in salads - I needed to find a way to use them. I settled on charring them under the grill because I love the smokey sweetness that develops when they're cooked this way. The smell, on the other hand, while they are cooking under the grill is not so appealing. I guess you can't have everything. After they were cooked, skinned and cut up - and samples nibbled on in the process purely for quality control you understand - I ended up with a nice big pile of delicious pieces. Some are now sitting in the fridge liberally bathed in extra virgin oil, garlic and white wine vinegar and the rest are packed up in serving size containers in the freezer, joining the large bags of pesto - five in all - that I’ve already made over the last few weeks. I'm sure there’ll be more of both, too, before the summer garden is finally finished.

And that reminds me it’s also time I started thinking about cool weather crops. This means I need to check out what seeds I already have and look into buying any extras I need. It also means I need some seed raising tubes. I make these out of newspaper and it’s a pleasantly repetitive task for when it’s too hot or windy outside - both of which are common enough here in March. Looks like I’m going to be busy.

Emergency Kitting

The other day I was reading the blog of artist Polla Posavec on her website The Simple Country Creative. She lives on a rural bush block outside Perth and like most such folk is very aware of the risks of bushfires. The horrendous bushfires that have engulfed most of the eastern part of Australia since September 2019 until very recently have spurred her into getting prepared so that in the event of a fire she and her family will be ready to leave at short notice.

This is something I had been thinking about, too, ever since some family members had to evacuate twice in recent months due to bushfires - and they live in suburbia albeit on the outskirts of the city. We also live in suburbia but with several large bushland reserves in close proximity. Fires flare there most summers and although they have been quickly dealt with so far there's always a risk that things could go awry. Ember attack - where strong winds send embers a considerable distance setting more fires - is always a possibility and since we, like most of our neighbours, have an evaporative air conditioner on the roof we are vulnerable. Bushfires aren't the only potential problems either. Since I started this post we've had five days of electrical storms along with severe winds, very heavy rain and hail leaving trees down and a trail of other damage and many people without power for significant periods of time.

But where to start? It's a big question. Like most other folk we have our important documents stashed safely somewhere I can grab them easily in an emergency. I organised this after a friend told me the harrowing story of how she had had leave her rapidly flooding home wading in knee deep water with her three young children holding hands in a line behind her as she tried to find a safe path and fought to keep vital documents out of the water.

This brought home to me just how vulnerable anyone can be so I gathered together a few things I'd want to be able to lay my hands on in a hurry in the house but not really in any organised way. They're scattered somewhat haphazardly at different points all over the house where we would normally use them. I guess I'd always assumed we'd be in a position to grab what we needed when we needed it and, of course, that's not necessarily the case. So after reading The Simple Country Creative's blog post (which for some reason I can't link to but you'll find it easily enough if you go to her website) I decided I should get things in order and I started by looking at what to put together in an emergency kit.

I was pleased to see that the box I already keep in the car boot has much of what is recommended. I started this when I had young children and it has proved its usefulness many times over. It contains sundry items such as a basic first aid kit, plastic rain ponchos, an emergency space blanket, a microfibre towel, folding drinking vessels, a multi-bladed pocket knife, a multi tool, a torch, matches, pen and paper, tarpaulin, a hat and a shower proof jacket among other things. Many of these have already proved very handy but there are other things on the list that I hadn't considered. I can see I've some work to do.

If you're interested you can find a suggested list of items here for both an emergency kit and a relocation or evacuation kit. This is what is recommended for Western Australia and your situation may well be different - for instance we don't need to consider something like being snowed in - but the basics like food, water and shelter are needed everywhere and there will be a similar list available for your area. With the way climate change is causing severe weather events it seems wise to be prepared and I'm already working on putting together both kits.