And Then This Happened

A while ago - not sure exactly what with days blurring somewhat with the self isolation and all but probably about six or seven weeks ago - I decided one of the dracaena fragrans which live in pots in a sheltered spot on my back veranda didn't look too happy. Since its common name is the happy plant I thought I should do something about it. So I chopped off its crown of leaves.

This may seem harsh but in fact it's a plant that can easily be propagated this way as my plant savvy sister-in-law reminded me. So there I was with a sad looking trunk in one pot and the crown sitting in the shade with its base resting on top of the potting mix of another pot. From there I pretty much left both to their own devices just keeping the potting mix damp and noting as I did that the crown still looked healthy.

Then I hurt my back. This is not an uncommon happening ever since a fall I had many years ago. I turn the wrong way, bend awkwardly, sneeze, cough, whatever and my back seizes up. It means though that I am very limited as to what I can do especially with arthritic knees that that don't take kindly to bending. So for the next few weeks it was pretty much just hosing all my potted plants from a height and hoping. In the last few days, though, I have finally been able to bend and this is what I found.

This is the decapitated crown which now has a stem of about 10 centimetres and is well on its way to being a new and healthy plant.

Meanwhile the apparently dead trunk it came from is already shooting in two places so it looks like I'll end up with a happy plant with two crowns.









Lovely as this is it's created something of a problem because much as I'd love to have one or both of them inside we share our house with an inside cat and the leaves are toxic. Given how much cat grass he eats bringing them in is a risk I'm not prepared to take. I'm not at all sure either that I have room for three of them on my veranda. Pisces doesn't think I have room for two, truth be told. Still I'm not letting that bother me too much for now. I won't really have to make a decision for some months to come and by then I'm sure I'll have found a solution.

Lockdowns and Self Isolation

Truth be told for the likes of me this isn't much of an issue. Pisces and I are retired from the regular workforce and as a writer what work I still do is done from home on my laptop.

That said ordinarily we do go out and see other people. We go to the shops with even a grocery run usually involving us having a coffee at one of the multitude of coffee shops in the shopping centre and we get to interact with people on the checkout. We see someone we know walking past our place and they stop to have a chat, we go to the beach, maybe pop in next door to have a chat with the next door neighbours or they come into our place - we've known each other for many years and have a close relationship. We wander around the corner to where Virgo lives or she might drop in to see us with the children. We often meet up with them all at the playground in the park that backs on to our yard, or just go for a walk around it perhaps meeting up with other neighbours. It's a popular place place this park, and you can usually find pre-schoolers and their minders there. Once school is out and the older kids arrive there are even more people - and there are always dogs, lots of dogs, most of which we've known since puppy hood. Somewhat less pleasurable is a visit to the doctor but even that involves a quick and friendly chat with the receptionist plus a face to face meeting with the doctor. All of this has gone.

We aren't in the strict lockdown that is happening in many parts of the world here either. We are strongly  - and I do mean strongly - urged not to go out unless it's essential and most folk are abiding by those rules without much fuss while, given our age and health status we're especially aware of the potential risks and not taking any chances. Western Australia closed its borders to all but essential traffic weeks ago and the state has been divided up into a number of regions which also have closed borders and this has been very effective in controlling the spread of the virus in comparison to other states and parts of the world.

It does mean though, that in person social contact is severely limited and with it all of the normal daily interaction with other people has gone. In the last six weeks apart from Virgo or her husband dropping off our grocery shopping and a couple of visits from her, Miss Four as she is now and the baby when we stand just outside our door and they stand further up the drive way, we have seen only an electrician for an electrical problem, a few delivery people who drop things at the door and scarper, the government supplied cleaner and one of our neighbours who occasionally brings food and drops in a newspaper once a week.  It made going to the doctor for our flu vaccination last week seem like a real outing. Sad, isn't it.

Because of this the internet and social media has become far more important. We do make phone calls locally - the speaker phone is a wonderful device for the technophobes like Pisces - but we also have family and friends scattered across the world and some in other regions of the state. This is where social media helps us keep in touch and video calls mean we can actually see who we're talking to. This makes a huge difference especially when you're talking to a small person who wants to show you what she's been doing.

I've often thought social media gets a lot of blame for what is not its fault. Of itself it's just a means of communication and so is just as open to abuse as any other form of social interaction and I'm very sorry for anyone who experiences bullying or other cruelty through it. For me, though, with health problems that can mean going out to socialise can be difficult, even impossible at times, social media is a blessing. I often spend more time in contact with many of my friends on social media than I do in real life and the way we're forced to live now is no exception.

A friend asked today is there a silver lining for us in this time of lockdowns, social distancing and fear and mine has to be that with all that is terrible that is going on in the world and that we can expect to go on in one form or another for some considerable time I am, through technology, able to stay in close contact with my family and friends. No waiting for months for letters to arrive from overseas or receiving bad news in a telegram.  We know what is going on almost as it happens. Those who suffered through the influenza pandemic in 1918 did not have this easy access where you can literally be in contact every day but we do and every day I am grateful for that.

Anzac Day 2020

In his book The Life of Reason Volume One in 1905 philosopher and writer George Santayana said 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. It's often repeated and frequently misquoted but the gist is remains the same - unless we look back at what has happened before and learn from it we will continue to make the same mistakes. It's very true. Look back into history and you see humanity over and over again doing the same things for the same reasons. That's why celebrating days like Anzac Day is so important not because as I thought when I was younger that they glorify war but because they force us to face the horrific reality of war. The lists of casualties and the lives ruined when those returning could not escape the demons of their experiences should make us stop and think and maybe, just maybe, we won't be so willing to go to war thinking of it as some glorious and heroic adventure. It's not and it never was.

So this Anzac Day - which in this time of lockdowns, illness and death is going to be very different from the usual where folk gather in remembrance at war memorials - I hope we all can still spare a few moments to remember and reflect. Whether you go out with a torch or lantern at dawn and stand in silent vigil at the end of your driveway, you listen to the Dawn Service on the radio or watch it on television or listen to the buglers who intend to play the traditional bugle calls in parks or from their homes we must remember the horrors of the past and those who died to keep their homelands safe.

Lest we forget.

Easter in the Time of COVID-19

Easter is usually a big deal for my family not least because it and the Cambodian New Year come close together so there are two big celebrations where we all get together within a few weeks of each other. My family is very multicultural - composed of multiple ethnicities and belief systems - and we celebrate every festival we can by getting together. We eat a lot and talk a lot and generally enjoy our time together.

This year, of course, is very different but Virgo and Miss Eight's mother organised a family catch up by video. This gave us a chance to see and talk and spend time with them and the children. Miss Eight and Miss I'm Four have grown up in a world of phones where you can talk face to face to anyone as well as iPads, tablets, laptops and computers. They've spending their isolation time doing school work at home.  Miss Eight's mother is a teacher so while she's been at school prepping for Term 2 Miss Eight has been spending her days learning with her other grandmother, a recently retired primary school teacher. But school holidays have now officially started and they were telling us how they are Skyping and videoing their friends now they can't see them in person.

This led to us saying how lucky they were that they could stay in touch. They were shocked as we went on to explain that the world had not always been like this. When their parents were the ages they are now there were no video phone calls - no mobile phones in fact and no tablets. Most families didn't even have home computers. The best they could do was to talk on the home phone to one another.

As the little ones struggle to imagine a world with no computers, no mobiles and no video chats - a world like the sufferers during the influenza pandemic in 1918 experienced - I think we should be counting our blessings, don't you. Grim as times are and with the likelihood of them being even grimmer in health and economic terms we are so much better off than they were then.

A Little Problem

- an electrical one that is.

We’ve been in splendid isolation here for some weeks now. We see Virgo for a couple of minutes when she drops off our shopping and she has brought her children for a suitably distanced outside visit on a couple of other occasions. I have to tell you it breaks your heart when a four year old sits at the appropriate distance and whispers ' When the germs go can we come to visit again?' Apart from this we’ve seen only the occasional delivery person - that is until yesterday when I turned on my computer and modem and things went wild.

It started with the lights on the laptop and modem flashing randomly and a ‘fizzing’ noise issuing from the power point. Panicked, I immediately switched it off and unplugged the power board. I took a moment or two then decided I should see if the power board was the problem. Almost holding my breath I plugged it in to another power point, turned it on - and everything was fine. Phew.

This still left me with the problem of what I should do next? Should I just turn that power point off and not use it - it hadn’t tripped the household power after all or should I call an electrician which is a big thing in these days of social distancing. Given I’m very nervous about electrical matters at the best of times I opted for the latter and called someone who has done some work for us before. He talked me through a few things on the phone and once he heard about the ‘fizzing’ noise decided he needed to come and check it out.

Now this particular power point is located in a slightly awkward corner - there’s a large and very densely packed bookcase close to it. The weight makes moving it impossible without - shudder - emptying it completely. Truth be told I'd known this needed sorting and had been trying successfully to avoid doing anything about it for quite some time. Now, though, there was no question but that I was going to have to tackle the task because, while it's simple enough to get to the switch to turn it on and off, for the electrician to actually work on it would require much more space. I was pushed for time before he arrived but I managed to clear off the shelves in a couple of hours. That was the easy part it turns out because now I have to work through everything, decide what to keep and what to dispose of then put what's left back on the shelves. This is a huge job and not one I'd want to tackle at the best of times and these are definitely not the best of times. I have no idea how long it's going to take but at least all will be clean and in order when I've finished.

Oh and the electrician discovered that something had come adrift in the box holding the power point so it stayed on continually creating an erratic current flow when anything was plugged in. Not a good thing to leave unrepaired he says.

Letters

Miss I'm Nearly four - and she is very close to that big day - loves letters. She can read a few words and definitely recognises her name so we decided to send her and Miss Eight a letter since these days we are in splendid isolation and the usual visits are suspended. When Virgo left home she left an impressive collection of sets of notepaper and matching envelopes. These were very much an 'in' part of birthday gifts in her 'tween years only to be discarded as technology took over communication and letter writing pretty much disappeared. For Miss I'm Nearly Four, though, getting a letter is still a thrill.

So Pisces and I sat down together and worked out a letter for each of them. Miss I'm Nearly Four lives very close to us and has no grasp of postage stamps and such so when Virgo came to drop off our groceries we handed her the letter to slip into their letter box. Miss I'm Nearly Four collects the household mail and was delighted to find something addressed to her by all accounts. She and Virgo came by for a brief visit later standing at appropriate distances on our driveway.  We have been presented with stickers in case we want to send another letter by the way. I think it's a hint.

Miss Eight lives some distance away and her letter is also on its way, this time by the more regular postal route. I walked up the street to the post box to send it off and the quiet in the street and adjoining park which backs onto our yard was almost eerie. Our street has little traffic in the usual run of things so after school there are usually any number of children riding bikes and scooters racing around and by 5:00 PM stay at home parents, grandparents and more children - and dogs, lots of dogs - meet up at the park. It's a noisy, fun-filled atmosphere and we love it. Yesterday it was almost empty. In the space of my brief walk I saw only one woman - who frowned and did not otherwise acknowledge me as I smiled and moved out to an acceptable distance to pass her, two children doing bike circles on their driveway and a man and a child on the far side of the park throwing balls for a dog.

It's a very different world, isn't it.

A Little Joy

I was thinking last night about how our lives seem to have been totally over-run with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The daily numbers, government briefings and social isolation have been taking their toll. So I decided to make a list of some of the joys that have come my way since the beginning of the year and, yes, there have been good things.

So here are some of them in no particular order of date or importance:

My cymbidium orchids are in bloom right now and much earlier than usual - they usually start to flower around the end of April but who cares. Here are the latest ones.

Pisces and I were both able to celebrate our birthdays by going out to lunch with family and friends before the virus put a stop to such gatherings.

On the last visit by Miss I'm Nearly Four she wandered out to the veggie garden as is her wont and came running back face lit up and saying 'Come quickly. There's a surprise in the veggie garden.'. She grabbed my hand and pulled me out with her to where she'd found some ripe, red capsicums which she was allowed to pick and take home with her. They were part of a very prolific capsicum season, most of which are now char-grilled and in the freezer. Here are just a few harvested on only one day. It's a badly cropped photo, I know, but Mr Puss refused to shift his paw so the side of the basket and it had to go.

I woke up at 1:30 AM one night to hear a mopoke calling in the tree outside my window. Mopokes, sometimes called moreporks, are more properly the Southern Boobook owl and I hadn't heard one for nearly two years. I was afraid the local population had all died, a very real possibility because these owls feed on rodents among other things and if they eat rats or mice that are dying or have died from baits the poison passes on into them.

A Facetime conversation with Virgo and her family where Miss I'm Nearly Four showed her ballet prowess. She wanted me to join in but that's hard when you're having to hold the phone.

I received a box of books from my friend, John, full of lots of interesting reading.

So these are some of my moments of joy from the last three months. I hope you have some, too.

Life Goes On

Well, it has to, doesn't it. Pisces and I are lucky in that, while we are in the higher risk health group  for COVID-19, being retired we don't have to worry about whether we'll have a job in the morning. All we have to do is to try to avoid being exposed to the virus and to do that under the new rules being imposed here, while short of a compulsory total lockdown, has us pretty much confined to the house. This is easier said than done, though. We still need food but with online grocery shopping overwhelmed and the ridiculous amount of panic buying that has been going on leaving many items in short supply that is more difficult than it should be. Luckily Virgo and her husband have stepped in to do our food shopping and very grateful we are for their help.

Apparently the shop shelves are still being stripped of paper goods and staples as soon as they are restocked. Heaven only knows where all this stuff is being stored - most people don't have vast storage spaces after all. Are they stashing it in garages and leaving their cars on the street? Maybe they're taking over a spare room if they're fortunate enough to have one or is it going under the bed perhaps? I have no idea. One thing I strongly suspect, though, is that much of this stockpile is going to end up going to waste. A local Asian stockist was bemused by people buying - or rather wanting to buy until he put limits on it - multiple 10 kg bags of wheat grains.

The thing is unless you have some means of grinding wheat it's pretty useless - all you can do is boil it - and, as I found out before all this started when I decided to mill my own flour, electric grain mills are pretty darn expensive. I had a reason for this. I like to make my own bread and because wholemeal flour goes rancid fairly fast I wanted to make what I needed as I needed it so for me a 10 kg bag of wheat would be a reasonable investment at any time. For the present, though, I can't get it anywhere - but as the mill I ordered is yet to arrive I'm not really bothered. Now I may be being unfair here but I strongly suspect that most of those buying up grains have little idea of how to use them nor the inclination or time to make their own bread. Baking with yeast is not that hard but it is time intensive especially if you have to mill it first and I have to wonder if those buying up wheat and other bread making ingredients are going to end up throwing the whole lot out.

I'm feeling a little irked, too, by the fact that all the yeast, which was already in short supply just when I wanted to restock my supplies before this all erupted, has gone from the shops and is also likely to be tossed away. That's not really a major problem, of course, because I can always set up a sourdough starter but to get a sourdough starter going takes considerably more time than just reaching for the yeast packet. Sigh. Isn't it bad enough to know that there are people dying from this virus without us behaving like selfish hoarders. Let's hope this all ends soon is all I can say.