In which eight weeks of staying home is a lot, and we aren't nearly done

In an emergency--particularly a pandemic--"excitement" is bad.

Of course, that makes writing a bit tedious.

In the "good" column, I know very few people who have actually gotten sick from the coronavirus.  Everybody here at the farm is fine, my parents are fine, the kids are fine, my brother and his wife are fine, the nieces and cousins and the rest are as fine as they were gonna be.  Given a worldwide emergency, that's really good.

It feels petty to complain at all.  I'm bored, but I have a farm to mess around with and it's Spring--there's plenty of stuff to do here.

The garden doesn't mind all the extra attention

There's very little sense of time passing.

I work from home, attending meetings and trainings and webinars online, I talk to my colleagues and my library kiddos online.  I read books and review them and post reviews online.  But most of my job--the best part--is talking face-to-face with strangers about books, and I don't get any of that right now.  I miss it.

The farm itself is exuberant as always in spring time.

The house is barely visible behind all the blossoms.  Look closely to find a Very Small Fox in the photo.

Foreground: cherry bush.  Background: apple trees.
The plums and pears are done with blossoms, and are moving on to Other Things.

I try to spend at least an hour each day destroying weeds.  The weeds are still ahead.

The chickens are moved from Hænaheim to the Easter Egg garden, and now I'm prepping the garden beds for beans.  Too early to plant those yet--they want soil at 70* and it's still too cold.

The main (oldest) garden is almost completely planted now.
Squash and cuke seedlings are still in the greenhouse, but everything else is in the ground!

Some of the herbs I started from seed are outside now (catnip, sage), and the other seedlings have a "field trip" out of the greenhouse each afternoon to become accustomed to Living in the Real World.

"hardening off" seedlings, aka "you aren't baby seeds anymore!"

My hair has never been the envy of the neighborhood.  I finally got tired of it (if I can see it, my hair is too long.  If it touches my ears, my hair is wa-a-a-a-ay too long!) and brought all the horse clippers up from the barn.

Between Monica's box and my box, we have a lot of clippers, especially considering my lack of talent with them.

Jim is experienced with using clippers on people!*
*he was in the military, 20+ years ago.  Ummmm.


Hair is now sufficiently shorter on the sides. I added my own touches.

purple stuff, and lots of it.

End result:  still not the envy of the neighborhood.

But it doesn't touch my ears anymore, and it is now purple.

On Friday, we had An Event!  Here's a link to Jim's post about it.

Remember Cami? She got married!

Cami and Scott wanted to get married...which is complicated in Plague Time.  Then, she remembered that Santa Jim is also Rev. Jim.   And Rev. Jim (plus two wedding witnesses available at no extra charge), can easily drive a few miles to Cami and Scott's new house.

Cami + Scott = one household.       Jim + me + Monica = second household.
A small, legal gathering!

Photo by Brit Solie

And then there's the rain.