A Long Bus Ride

The Justice Bus in Delaware in April 2025

In May 2024, I wrote about that month's Justice Bus and finding myself in full advising mode because of last-minute and unexpected shortages of our attorney volunteers. 

May 1 was this month's Justice Bus and guess what? 

Yep.

The Ides of March have nothing on our May Justice Bus days.

One of our regular volunteers had an urgent matter come up that forced him to withdraw two days before the May Bus day. I could not find another volunteer to take one session, let alone the four that the attorney who had to step out takes. So I swallowed hard and hoped for no-shows.

We are now in the fourth month of serving hot sandwiches at our Bus sessions and, as the cook, I spent Wednesday cooking (shredded turkey with onions) and making sure I had the other items—napkins, carryout containers, a tablecloth, rolls, and such—ready to go. While I cooked and prepped, I also thought about what the May Justice Bus might hold. We had a solid slate of clients, and I knew of at least one with an unusually complex situation.

Thursday dawned gray and damp. With Warren's assistance (he always shuttles me and the food and helps me get it inside), I arrived early, set up the food table, touched base with Judy, our law librarian, talked with Scott, the Justice Bus staff attorney, and took a deep breath.

The clients started arriving.

Four hours later, Scott and I each finished up within a few minutes of one another, with Scott then helping me sort out a stack of copied court papers for my last client to take with her. Our regular Bus schedule is four sessions of 45 minutes each (three hours), starting at 10:00 a.m. and finishing around 1:00 p.m. This day, because the final two clients had detailed and unusual situations that took extra time, it was a little after 2:00 p.m. before the last two clients exited and we were done.

When we were finished and met back up, Scott had that dazed look one gets from hours of intense focus and I'm sure my face matched his. We were both exhausted. And hungry. Scott immediately made and started eating two sandwiches. He and I talked briefly about a few Bus notes to follow up on, Judy helped pull down signs, Warren (who'd come earlier thinking, as did I, that I would be done earlier, so he had sat and waited) helped me break down and pack away the food, and I took one last circuit through the areas we had used to make sure none of us had left anything behind. Scott packed his gear up, and we followed him out the front doors of the library, waving goodbye to Judy, who was outside collecting the parking cones. Finally, some five and a half hours after I had arrived, I was on my way home (and grateful that we only live four blocks away).

I am writing this Friday night. I am still tired. It was a long Bus day. Not counting the Bus, there are a lot of extra matters piled on my plate right now, so that adds to the tiredness. Oh, and let's not forget my feet! I am on Stage 2 of what we (my podiatrist and I) hope will only be a four stage process to get them back to functional capacity. (Stay tuned!)

But—and this is from the heart—it was a GREAT Bus day. Any day I can work alongside friends and colleagues to help strengthen this community—with legal advice, with food, with listening, with our presence—is a great day.

P.S. As I looked back at the May 2024 post before posting this, I scrolled down and saw that I had posted a photo of the first spiderwort of 2024, noting that it had bloomed three days earlier. I started laughing. Just yesterday I took a photo of the first spiderwort of 2025! 

And here it is:

Some things are just meant to be! 

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 2

The zucchini at full speed

Oh my. What a difference ten days make. 

On the seed front, zukes and cukes are going great guns:

And the cucumbers are right there keeping pace with the zucchini! 

On the pepper front, the lowly little seeds I had dried from store-bought sweet peppers are starting to rear their tiny heads. I do not know what to expect from them as I am no doubt dealing with hybrids and who knows what this next generation will hold. But at least they are coming up! 

Who knows what they will produce, but at least they are growing! 

But my Leysas? The seeds I bought in search of a "truly" sweet pepper? Up until Wednesday, my answer was have been simple. Zilch, nada, rien. And then this one poked up, barely:

Look close in the upper right cell

Okay, maybe hope does spring eternal.

Outside, the weather has been March erratic. Warm days, then cold. Light frosts, then nothing, then light frosts again. All the same, and knowing that we are in Zone 6b (last frost date is mid-April), we are starting to do outdoor garden work. Warren suggested we till the kitchen garden and we did our first tilling today (Thursday).

It's electric. It's lightweight. It showed me who's boss.

Warren did the first pass. I raked the garden over, raking up the weeds the tiller had uprooted and then I did the second pass with the tiller.

Holy moly.

Talk about a wake-up call as to how far I have yet to go before I am capable of working consistently with our lightweight tiller. After about 30 minutes wrestling with it, I finally got enough of the hang of it that I could kinda sorta handle it.

As I started in on the garden work, I set my kitchen timer for an hour out of the gate. As I told Warren, until I build up my energy and my reserves, I need to watch my time. And I am glad I did; I was ready to gather up my tools when it went off.

We have ambitious plans to clean up, clear out, restore, and expand our two front beds, the back perennial bed, and the small bed that hugs the back side of our house. And of course there are the kitchen garden and the Hej garden to turn our efforts to for this year's vegetables.

Here's to more tilling! 

First tilling done! 

Update

I wrote this blog out by longhand Thursday night, while I sat at an evening rehearsal of the Mansfield Symphony. This morning, before I came upstairs to type this post, I took a look again at the sluggard Leysas and this is what I saw:

The second little head is in the lower left corner of the lower right cell. 

Two are now poking up their heads! 

Here's hoping.

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 1

What my kitchen looked like Saturday

Hope springs eternal. At least when it comes to gardening.

It is mid-March and while it is still too early, even with climate change, to plant outside, my mind has turned to the coming year's potential. Warren has thoughts and ideas about our flower beds and the two front beds; my focus is on the possibilities in the vegetable arena. I have been making mental notes, looking at seed catalogs online, reviewing past years, and dreaming about this year's gardens.

So following through on my eternal hope, I just started seeds. Well, to be truthful, I started a lot of seeds. After last year's lackadaisical gardening performance due to my still recovering from the fall/winter medical messes, my just not being up to it, getting to my favorite go-to garden center, totally local and community-committed, for the garden (Miller's Country Gardens) way too late to get the good stuff, doing a mediocre job of even taking care of the garden—forget the weeds, I'm just talking about the plants, dealing with moving my dad into assisted living, and having the gardens WAY TOO CROWDED (again, always, even more so), I am set to make this year different and, I hope, better, 

I spent a chunk of Saturday starting SOME (SOME!!!) seeds inside. For the most part, I had stopped doing a lot of seed starting inside, other than zucchini, some years ago. So what was different about this year? A few reasons. One, there were some varieties I wanted to try that the likelihood of my finding them potted at Miller's or anywhere else was slim at best. I ordered a particular sweet pepper that caught my eye, and an heirloom zucchini and heirloom cucumber that had waved to me. (I had also saved some seeds from some sweet peppers that I'd bought at Aldi in the winter. Why not try them?)

The sweet peppers I am eager to try

The other key reason to starting them NOW, ignoring the timing issue with the last probable freeze date, is I am early enough that if the seedlings don't take off and thrive like they need to, Miller's opens April 7 and I will be a regular visitor as the spring opens up. Usually they bring out their "cold" plants out first, like broccoli, cabbage, and then their warm plants, the tomatoes and peppers, a few weeks later. I will get my tomatoes at Miller's because they are a pain to grow from seed at least for me. 

Zucchini-to-be, I hope! 

While I was dabbling in the dirt in the kitchen, Warren came in from the shop and expressed surprise. "I knew you were planning to do that soon, just not today." When I told him it takes 10+ days the seeds to sprout before I could see what I have to work with, then I can figure out what to do at Miller's, he understood immediately.

Warren and I will be tilling, spreading some compost, and tilling again in the next few weeks to get the vegetable beds ready. (Okay, we'll deal with some of the flower beds too. I love flowers, but they are not vegetables!) By late April, I hope to have some plants in the ground. (We're in Zone 6b here, so that is about the earliest that the USDA charts say to plant without fear of deadly frost.)

Hope springs eternal. So do gardens. 

I can already taste that first tomato! 

The 2024 Gardens: Part 1

My very last garden post in 2023 went up three days before the endoscopic ultrasound (a routine procedure performed without a hitch in almost all cases) that landed me in the hospital and skilled nursing for nine weeks. As I wrote when I finally got home in late October and finally started blogging again (albeit slowly) in late November, the gardens had gone to tatters since late August. And while I said then that I would "likely" have a garden again, I confess that it is now late April and other than make a few lazy notes in my head, I have not done a single thing on the garden front. 

That being said, absolutely nothing prepared me for what I discovered a few days ago coming up in the kitchen garden:

Recognize this? Here, let's try another photo:

Those, my friends, are volunteer lettuce starts. I never even suspected that lettuce would go to seed and then come up in the spring. 

In that last garden post in 2023, I noted that some of the the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce had gone to flower:

I had taken down most of the flowering stalks, but left a few up because the flowers were so beautiful and delicate:

Given the medical situation this fall, no one ever got back to them to clip the remaining flowers. And so the lettuce did what any sensible plant would do: it seeded itself.

We' won't be making much salad from these few starts unless they get a lot larger. All the same, I clipped a few leaves this evening and added them to our salad bowls before we sat down to supper. That gave us each a taste of spring and a hint of the magic of growing our own food.

And that taste was delicious. 

Dogwood Blooms

When I started writing this post early in the morning, it had a much longer, messier title and I meant to ramble through several topics. But looking at it several hours later, I think I will hold it to one thought: the dogwood tree. 

There is a dogwood tree close to the east side of the house and it is in full bloom. The dogwood tree is elderly; Warren's parents planted it decades ago. When you stand in our bedroom, the blossoms of the upper branches are right outside the windows. When I do dishes at the kitchen sink, the blossoms of the lower branches are right outside the window over the sink. I do not know how many more springs the tree has left in it, but my heart lifts up when I behold it in full bloom. Lilacs are my favorite spring bloom of all, but nothing matches the stunning impact of this dogwood.

As seen from the backyard

Last fall, when I was whiling away my hours in the hospital, Warren and his son David put some drupes (the seeds of the dogwood) into peat pots and stowed them in the back of the refrigerator. Drupes have to have a lengthy, cold period before they will sprout. I have not pulled them out to see if we have any sprouts, but I think it is time to take a look.

I wrote that last bit this morning and, hours later as I finish this up, I just went down and took a look. Nope. No sprouts. Probably not going to get any, looking at it. None of us (David included) ever checked on them; I think they needed watered. I may water them after I post this, and then check again in a few more weeks.

In a day or so, I will return to the other topics that I meant to dump into this post. But for now, back to what is happening outside: a chorus of spring joy. 

Which Was the Bigger Event?

Today there was a total solar eclipse across a swath of the United States. Where we live (Delaware, Ohio) was in the path of totality. Warren and I were invited to a viewing gathering next door and spent a wonderful few hours chatting, laughing, and watching the sun slowly disappear and then reappear. 

So as to not arrive empty-handed, I made two types of cookies to take: a cinnamon sugar cookie and a double chocolate cookie. Earlier in the day, I took some to our neighbors on the other side. In thanking me, Adam (the father of Margaux of the wonderful birthday tower) texted that he was "assuming that this is the correct way to eat them for the total eclipse effect:"

Eclipse preview

Yes, indeed! 

Seven years ago, there was a partial solar eclipse in our area, but this was the first full solar eclipse any of us (there were seven of us total) had ever seen. We were all wonderstruck.  All of us just kept marveling at what was taking place over our heads. We kept commenting on the changes in the light and the air temperature. 

And truly, there are not enough words to describe the event.

Solar corona at totality; if you were looking through eclipse glasses, you would see the sun totally blackened with a shining ring of light around it. My phone? Not so much! 

So yes, that was a BIG event today! 

But there was another BIG event earlier today. Midmorning, after thinning out the dead flowers from a birthday bouquet, I walked the discards out to the compost container back by the Hej garden. That garden currently is covered in purple deadnettle, one of the first flowering anything to come up in the spring. I had seen the garden last week and knew that it was carpeted in the small flowering plants. All the same, I stopped in my tracks. 

What stopped me?

BEES!!! 

Several bumblebees were zigzagging through the deadnettle. I only had my phone on me, but all the same managed to capture one of them in action:

The bumbler clearly ignoring me

 I went back to the house and grabbed my camera. Now, I have not really used my camera since shattering my wrist in January. I tried a few times, but pretty much lacked the physical capability to hold it as well as enough sensation in my index finger to trip the shutter. But I have been doing my exercises faithfully for week and while I am not 100% yet, I am much better. Better enough that I could get some shots off.

In the brief time it took to walk to the house, get my camera, then walk back out to the Hej garden, the bumblebees had moved on. But happily for me, the honeybees had moved in behind them and were busy mining the pollen:

The first honeybees of 2024

Bees, bees, bees! These are the first I have seen in 2024 and that, for me, is also a BIG event! 

I love that on a day of a once-in-a-lifetime sky event, my morning started with my finding a whole bed of bees, already starting their 2024 rounds. And maybe there aren't enough words to describe that event either.

The bigger event? They were both BIG. 

This Year's Gardens, Part 5

 I had grand plans for the garden front this weekend. We'd get compost, we'd till the gardens, I'd get the zucchini planted, and on and on and...

Yeah.

It rained Friday. It rained Saturday until well into the afternoon. 

Too wet to till.

Sunday, both Warren and I were in a slump all morning for a number of reasons: his workload, my workload (volunteer, but still), computer problems (mine), health issues (mine, obviously), blah blah blah. At one point (the low point on the computer problem), I put my head down to my desk and started crying, which is not like me. We were both struggling.

But Sunday was also glorious, sunshine and blue skies.

I looked at the brilliant day outside. "Why don't we at least sit outside on the deck and enjoy the sun?" Warren shrugged. Okay. 

It was better sitting outside on the deck steps. But we were still struggling. Warren halfheartedly suggested we go out for ice cream. I halfheartedly shrugged. Then I sat up.

"We have ice cream! Let's make sundaes and have them for lunch!" 

Now we were starting to move. Sundaes for lunch! Sunshine! blue skies! 

The sundaes were enough to push us both a bit. We took the deck furniture out of its winter tarps and set up the deck. Progress! Then my sons called for Mother's Day, first Ben, then Sam. Joy! More energy as I sat in the sun and talked with them. 

After finishing the second call, I said to Warren, "Now I'm ready to garden." I walked down to the shed in back and brought up the four planters I scored for free three years ago and arranged them on the patio. More progress.

I couldn't till the gardens, but I could get the garden started. 

With Warren's help, the planters went from this

to this:

From front to back: Bibb lettuce, Bibb lettuce, Finger carrots (a small carrot), and Paris Romaine.

At this point, Warren felt he was ready to go into his shop and make some progress on crotale stands. I decided I felt good enough to transplant the globe thistle I had sprouted earlier. I had four ice cream cartons of sprouted seeds (well, three hearty ones and one which didn't do a whole lot); I knew where I wanted them.

I spent the next hour under those blue, sunny skies planting. Two went in the back flower bed (one of those two being the one that underperformed). How great that I was deep in the daylily bed?

That blue gardening seat? Best garden purchase ever.

One carton went out front in in the bed anchored by the redbud. Earlier this spring I had relocated the agastache (hyssop) to the back flower bed, because it wasn't doing well with the redbud. So there was extra room in that bed, allowing for the globe thistle to go up front and not under the redbud.

For the record, the ice cream containers made excellent sprouting containers. They have depth, so you don't have to worry about them outgrowing the container too soon. To plant, all I had to do was cut down the side, peel the side walls off, and then slide the seeds/soul off the bottom into the hole I had already dug.

One container mid-peel on the wall. 

All told, I probably spent an hour and a half outside. It was glorious. Warren came out of his shop from time to time to check on me out of love, out of watchfulness (besides the truck analogy, Tim also last week said it is time to step back from doing so much), out of pleasure that the slumped morning had turned so spectacularly (he too was making progress in his shop). 

And that, my friends, is where the gardens stand as of this morning. 

This Year's Gardens, Part 4

The globe thistle is sprouting! 

 

While the weather is still making up its mind as to whether it is really, truly Spring, we are certainly having more days pointing that way. Looking at my garden journal from last year, it was May 15 before I planted most of the garden, although I was already eating lettuce from some volunteers in the prior year's patch (none this year). Getting the beds ready and watching the seeds inside certainly make sense this time of year.

And the seeds inside, at least most of them, have not disappointed. The globe thistle I gathered from the bed down the street? It came up in profusion in three of the four cartons. And the zucchini has gone wild in its little greenhouse; I am hoping I can keep it reined in there before getting it into the garden outside. Worst case scenario, I will up-pot them into empty yogurt containers to hold them for another week or so. (The western scrub sunflowers? Nothing. Nothing.)

And the zucchini! 

The tiller

I spent much of April 22 and some of April 23 doing a hard weeding by hand of the kitchen garden. It wasn't until April 23 that I finally got my electric tiller unboxed and put together.  That was easy enough. Using it, however, was (still is) a learning curve. I got better as I tilled longer, but clearly I am a novice. I did the kitchen garden, the smaller of the two, with Warren offering suggestions from time to time.  

Yesterday was warm and sunny and windy. Warren suggested that we both take a break from the household demands and till the Hej garden, the larger garden. It had been Concert Week and we were both on overload all week. I was exhausted and not feeling well, and the tears came rushing up. "I can't till today," I said. "There just isn't enough of me."

"No, I'll till," said Warren. "You can direct and help with the smaller things."

 The Hej garden was a mess; I had only cleaned it roughly last fall. The open compost bins built by the previous owners needed structural attention; Warren and Dave (who owns the property) spent some time discussing those issues. The open compost bin also contains a commercial plastic one, which Warren dug out and turned so it could be used. (Oooh, a compost bin! My own compost!) Then he turned to the tilling of the garden.

The Hej garden is larger. It is also a much wetter garden because of its location (on a downslope) and drainage issues that weren't there years ago. The soil was heavy and dark. After a few attempts with the tiller, its blades were caked with mud and weeds. 

The Hej Garden Before

Warren was undeterred. He got his mower out and mowed the weeds down, then brought out the yard de-thatcher/scarifier he bought late last year. It too soon had its share of mud and weeds clogging it, but he got it through the garden.

Warren bringing in the heavy equipment

As for me, I took up and cleaned off the bricks that delineate the two unfenced sides of the garden. And, no surprise, unclogged the blades of the tiller and the de-thatcher. I'll put the bricks back in place after we finish tilling. I'm glad Warren stuck with me and encouraged me to come out to the garden, stepping in where my physical capacity was lacking. I was tired when we came in, but delighted by the time in the sun and the dirt and the smell of green. 

Pulling up the bricks until all the tilling is done. That's my glove, not a detached hand.

By Saturday after next, my goal is to get a load of compost for both gardens and get it tilled in. That will be May 14, which puts me on track with last year. During that week, I will go to my local farm market and buy plants. And somewhere in there I will take the tiller out to my dad's house and help him till a small garden.

For now, though, the garden tilling is started. 

The Kitchen Garden

The Hej Garden After 

When I talked with my son Ben yesterday, we talked about their garden plans. He said they were planting "only one" zucchini plant this year, but lots of tomatoes. Like me, he and Alix discovered that the best tomatoes are the ones from the garden. He said they would not plant peppers this year; they had concluded that their homegrown ones were not superior to the store ones, and were a lot more work. He mentioned there would be herbs in the garden.

Unlike Ben, I will plants lots of zucchini. We are just finishing our 2021 stash in the freezer. We will have basil, but I don't grow other herbs. Pesto is one thing; dealing with the other herbs is another. And while I noted in my 2021 garden notes that I would plant "fewer" tomatoes this summer, my resolve is weakening as I think of the joy of a fresh tomato. 

Time will tell. 

This Year's Gardens, Part Three

Seeds from the trip last summer 

Here in central Ohio, the weather is messing around with us. A few weeks ago, we had temperatures in the 70s. Earlier this week was snow. Today is cloudy and mild; tomorrow it is supposed to be almost 80.

I have yet to start any outside gardening. Heck, I have yet to clean up the gardens, let alone till them! But all the same, I did get started today in this year's gardens. (I just realized I had been titling these posts "This Year's Garden," singular, when it clearly is "This Year's Gardens," plural.) 

Last year, I had to plant the zucchini three times, twice for the squirrels. They dug up every single seed and ate them all, sometimes leaving the empty shells to taunt me. We had zucchini finally only because Warren came up with a homemade seed starter and I got enough plants going to transplant them. This year, I am not even bothering to try the seeds outside. The peat pots starter from our neighbors was activated today and planted with zucchini and cantaloupe (which the squirrels also devoured in seed stage last year).

Loaded up and ready to go! 

As I was finally getting my mind and hands into the gardens, I decided to go ahead and try to sprout seeds from last summer's trip and from a large globe thistle patch in the neighborhood. I'd been saving small yogurt cups and ice cream containers over the winter just for this purpose. For these, I am taking the "they're plants, they know what to do" approach. We'll see.

Globe thistle seeds

When I finished, I slid all of the containers under my plant rack. They'll get some sun there and I can keep an eye on them, especially the zucchini. If it does get as warm tomorrow and rain holds off, I may even make it into the kitchen garden to clear away some of last year's debris. 

And then there is the redbud. We have a redbud tree out front that we planted a few years ago. In pruning it earlier this year, I took one branch inside to see if I could get the buds to open up, setting it in a jelly jar on the table. Yes, the buds did open up. And then leaves starting sprouting on the end of the branches. 

One morning, Warren looked and said, "It's growing roots."

And it was. 

They are only ("only") very fine filaments floating in the water. But I am intrigued. Can I get the redbud to root? Will we have another redbud to plant at some point later this year? 

Only time will tell.

This Year's Garden, Part Two

 I know gardening time is coming because the daffodils have started to bloom.

Seeds at a local nursery/garden center are 33% off right now. (My favorite farm center, where I will buy my tomatoes, peppers, and other starts, doesn't open for another two weeks.)

And, a few weeks ago, after looking at the gardens, looking at Warren's schedule and the demands on his time and energy, and being honest with myself about my ever diminishing physical capacity, I brought in heavy reinforcements.

I called my dad and let him know about the tiller. Before telling him I had bought one, I asked him if he planned on gardening much this summer. My father is 89 this summer, and age is taking its toll on his body. He said "Well, maybe just a tomato plant, but..." and let his voice trail off.

My dad has always gardened. He grew up in a family where the vegetable garden fed them both in season and over the winter as my grandmother canned everything she could. My parents gardened and canned through all of my childhood, and even when the canning went by the wayside, there was always a garden for the summer.

I told him I had an electric tiller. "I figure you might like to borrow it," I said casually. I could hear an intake of breath in surprise. Then Dad said, "Well, maybe I'll do a couple of rows after all."

You could hear the happiness in his voice.

This Year's Garden, Part One

 

Yesterday was really warm. Warm enough outside that a sweatshirt without a jacket over it was plenty. (Today, at least as I type this, is also warm, but the temperature will fall later today.) Warren did a fair amount of his shop work outside on the back patio, which his shop (the repurposed garage) opens directly onto. He had instrument parts to spray, and I could hear the telltale rattle of the spray paint can as he shook it walking back and forth.

Our next door neighbors were out in the far back part of their yard with a large measuring tape spread across the grass. Having baked sourdough crackers to share, I walked a container over to them and got to see what was going on. Warren joined me as well.

They had staked out a 10' x 20' area of grass, with a continuous string connecting three of the four stakes. "We're trying corn this year," said Maura, nodding at the plot.

Adam chimed in. "From what we read, you need at least a ten by ten plot so the corn gets fertilized, so we went slightly larger. We're planning on enclosing it with chicken wire to try to keep the critters out." He looked at the grassy plot. "Getting that turned over will take some time." 

Maura turned to me. "So have you ever grown corn?"

As a matter of fact, I have grown corn in town at the house I lived in when my children were younger, just a few blocks from where I live now. I thought back to that long ago experience and said, "Yes and the biggest issue was the squirrels." 

Eyebrows went up. 

"Squirrels would eat the shoots as they came up,"I explained. "I mean, they didn't get them all, or even most of them, but I learned to really dislike squirrels."

Alice, their young daughter, spoke up. "We could put a top over the garden to keep the squirrels out."

No, not a solution, said Adam.

We talked gardens for a while longer: what they planned (hoped) to grow, what I plan (hope) to grow. I blogged very little about last year's gardens, for many reasons, and am hoping this year will be more satisfying and more productive.

Adam mentioned they had ordered "a lot" of peat moss starter sets. "More than we thought." Would I like one? 

Absolutely.

They turned back to their corn-patch-to-be. Warren headed back to his shop. I talked to our neighbors on the other side, who were also out enjoying the sun and warmth, then headed inside. The afternoon rolled on.

Much later that day, Warren came into the kitchen with a tray in his hand and a quizzical look on his face.

"Peat pots? Are these for you?" He had missed Adam's offer outside.

Yes, peat pots! And a starter tray! 

Just a few days earlier, I had bought a bag of Seed Starting Mix. I don't start all the garden inside like I used to; I buy most of my major starts (tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli) at a local farm market. But after my pitched battle with squirrels over the zucchini last spring, I'm starting the zucchini inside and will use the peat pots for that. During our travels last summer, I picked a few flower heads gone to seed from ditches along the road. I have been saving small yogurt cups and larger ice cream containers through the winter and will use those filled with the starter mix to try to sprout the flowers.

Even with climate change, it is still too early in central Ohio to start planting a garden. The farm market I mentioned above, a family run one on the edge of Delaware, will not even open until April 1. I still have to put some thought into what and how much I am growing. I will talk with my dad to see if he wants me to plant anything for him; at almost 89, he may not be doing much gardening this year, but I also know what it means to him to have a few plants out in his back garden. A friend I just talked with mentioned she would be gone too much of the summer to try to keep tomato plants going; I reassured her tomatoes would not be a problem. 

So yes, there is still planning to do. But the warmth and the neighbors and the talk and the peat pots have lightened my heart and stirred my thoughts. 

Spring is coming. So is gardening. 

Observations About April Money

When I wrote about our March food and household expenditures, I noted that we spent larger than normal amounts of money that month and the month before, most of it being related to stocking up on basics and staples. I also breathed the hope that our April spending would be much less.

Well, here it is May Day, although given our weather in Ohio, you'd swear we were in March still, and I have the numbers at hand because guess what? Our spending on food has decreased greatly so I only have a few numbers to add instead of a sheet full of them. And, looking at the decrease in spending, clearly we are looking at what we have around the house rather than jumping in the car to go to the grocery store to get something else (more about that later).

Our April food purchases? $144.56. Household items added up to $6.10, the bulk of that being trash liners for our household, a box which will last into 2021. Total? $150.66. That starts to yank the average YTD down from $238+ to $216+. I might get it down to $180.00/month average yet. We did not eat out (takeout) at all.

The food costs include two large shoppings at Aldi, one in person early in the month by Warren and one online for home delivery later in the month, one key food item when Warren had to get something for his shop at Walmart (What key food item? Kosher salt, a must have and something Aldi does not carry), and, finally, $5.00 to the Symphony for the Hershey's chocolate bars (from February's downtown Chocolate Walk) that I knew were there. The early Aldi shopping included two hams from Aldi at the pre-Easter price of 89¢ a pound. Those are now residing in the freezer and will come into play later on this year.

The most interesting revelation about April spending has been the changes I see in me. Even without the spending spurts in February and March, I now realize exactly what I mentioned above: I have a huge tendency to jump to the grocery store rather than ask myself "so what do we have here?"  Now that I am unable to go to the store and we are both very reluctant to have Warren in a store (because I am in such a high risk group), I find myself being far more thoughtful about food preparation. To borrow from blogger friend Laurie at The Clean Green Homestead, I am using what's on hand.

One item on hand now is sourdough starter, which I use weekly. (Well, I feed it weekly and then use the discard, but that's what sourdough starters are all about: feeding and discarding.) There are a variety of things you can bake with the discard, but my favorite to date has been sourdough brownies.

Sourdough starter (the bubbles show it is active)

But going back to realizing how much I just went to the grocery without thinking: this revelation about my twitchy impulse (to borrow from Anthony Ongaro, the one minimalist I enjoy, really like) caught me off guard. I famously do not shop. Ever. Malls? Nope. Online? Nope. Amazon Prime? Ha. I don't even buy books (very much) anymore. But apparently I was totally open to the call of the grocery store. And while it is likely another month or more before my oncologist lets me even stand near a grocery store, let alone set foot in one, this is a truth about me (that twitch to shop) that I need to be aware of when I finally do enter a grocery.

Despite my optimism in early April about gardening soon, the weather here has stayed colder than I expected for this time of year. We are still having occasional frosts. So there are no beds planted, other than the sprouted onions I planted for the first time ever, most of which seem to have settled in and are growing. I hope the gardening front is entirely different by May's end.

And until then, we'll enjoy the brownies.

The More Things Change

"The more things change, the more they keep changing."

I admit it: I stole that line from the our Juvenile Court judge, who is my employer, a neighbor (our backyards connect), and a longtime close friend. Because that pretty much sums up life around here.

As I type on this 29th day of March, the wind outside is picking up as our part of Ohio moves from balmy springlike weather (it was 72 yesterday!) to what will be a drop into the 40s and 30s. I believe we are also under a High Winds Advisory from the National Weather Service for good measure.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been walking daily, taking my camera along, and posting what I photograph on Facebook. Friends both near and far have been watching to see what I come up with each day. chiming in with stories or memories or their own shots. It has been a lot of fun.

I did not walk today, despite the sunshine and warm temperatures earlier.  The unwell feeling from the myeloma has been building over the last several days, so I skipped the walk. Instead, I posted some of the shots I had taken over the last week or so but not used before. I shared my health situation; my status brought a comment from a concerned friend (ranting against the myeloma) that led me and my friend and boon companion Anne, lawyers both of us, to riff on the application of the law of adverse possession as it relates to my myeloma. I don't know if the author of the initial comment appreciated our levity, but Anne and I certainly did. (I also realize that last sentence is probably incomprehensible to anyone who has not sat through first year Property Law.) You know you are in quarantine for a long time when you make law jokes with good friends.

I have been watching friends and family build community through these times. We cannot visit, but we reach out through other ways. At the Facebook site for the Central Ohio Symphony, we are posting a video every day: our musicians, our conductor (a world class trombonist), pieces by some of our composers. (You do not need a Facebook account to reach the Central Ohio Symphony's postings; they are open to the public.) Other friends are also sharing and posting music, visual art, and more. Today I joined the church service at All Saints Episcopal Church in Vancouver, Washington. So what's a Jew like me doing in a place like that, be it the venue (a church) or the distance (2400 miles)? Because the churchman conducting the service, Father Joe, is my child-in-law's father and my grandchildren's grandfather. In short, family. Family that I love and miss. Like so many other places, his church is closed because of COVID-19 and today was the first livestreamed service. Of course I watched it. And afterwards I said the Shehechiyanu, a Hebrew prayer I recite often, giving thanks to the Creator for the fact that I am still alive and sharing the moment. (And while I was watching the service, Warren surprised me with making and bringing me lunch. You bet that prayer of gratitude includes the fact that I have this dear man in my life.)

This post is all over the board, but so is life today. So I'm going to close with the best example of resilience I have seen in a long time. When it was so warm yesterday, I spent over an hour in the morning starting to clean out the vegetable garden, which I had brought down but not cleaned out last fall. Last October or November, I had tossed out a potbound planting of thyme, burnt out from a hot summer and fall. The clump of roots and soil had been in the garden upside down all winter. I turned it over and found new growth on the old thyme. Despite being burnt out, despite being thrown out, despite being left to the winter blasts, the thyme came back. Now that's resilience!

See that little bit of green to the left? That's new thyme! 

And yes, I replanted it, this time in the garden.