Quarantine Diary #45, 4/27/2020 - Seeds and Meat and Books

I had to do an errand this morning that was in the neighborhood of a Stein’s yard and garden store. I’d already looked online at several seed companies. All seemed to feature whackadoodle high prices as well as warnings about no substitutions and delayed shipments. That was discouraging.

I put on my Big-Girl mask and went into the store at 10AM (there were three customers in the whole place) and bought the seeds on my list as well as seeds not on my list. 

I had forgotten about Four o’clock flowers. I grew them back when my kids were little. They grew right next to the playhouse that the kids built with scrap lumber. Boy, that was a house that wasn’t Lil’ Tykes. That playhouse was scrappy, the beat-up walkway where it resided was scrappy, there wasn’t full daylight, the dog ran back and forth right there – and those 4 o’clocks just bloomed and bloomed.  

Are flowers sometimes souvenirs you grow to remind yourself of the last time you grew them? Last year one hollyhock by my kitchen door just took off to grow nine feet tall! Len put a hook in the side of the house to hold it up. Nearly every woman who walked past it stopped a minute to tell me about playing hollyhock dolls when she was little.

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Right now, most of us are becoming aware that the United States’ meat supply is being upended. Most meat is becoming a little or a lot more expensive.  In the frugal blogs I read, some people are going out of their way to buy larger than ordinary amounts of meat to put in their freezers against rising prices and short supplies.

There is a lot of American hypocrisy going on when we blame China’s “wet markets” for this pandemic. Yes, those markets of so many animals are dangerous and ought to be closed. 

But just as dangerous are our factory farms where animals are genetically engineered to produce the most meat the most cheaply. Factory farms are breeding grounds for the next pandemic.

So that meat some of us are rushing to buy right now – maybe we need to back off.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/22/21228158/coronavirus-pandemic-risk-factory-farming-meat

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This week I am going to attempt a daring feat I have never done before. I have a stack of books on my nightstand.  I often dip into them to read for a few minutes, but then I go to the library and find fiction that will “take me away.” Our Waukesha Public Library (bless them) is kinda open again as of today. But one has to order books ahead, make a date and time slot to pick up one’s chosen books, there is no browsing.

This makes sense. But alas, how do I know what I want to read before I’ve started to read it?

So in this particular week I am going to read my own damn books. (Actually, two of the books in my stack are loaners from friends.)

Does anyone want to join me in this grueling commitment to just go ahead and read a book they have been meaning to read for a long time?