respublica

Nature is taking over

These reports are interesting. Observers of our environment in different parts of the country have taken note of how our human quarantine has changed things. No crowds on beaches in all shoreline states has seen a big increase in marine life and new life to coral reefs in Hawaii, sea turtles are increasing in Thailand, and sea shells are piling up on the Outer Banks beaches of North Caroline with no humans there to collect them.

There are more stories like this, nature healing and going back to its normal state during a time when humans are absent. Environmentalists are thrilled by this and the most extreme among want people out of our environments forever. Well, maybe not that extreme but close.

My excitement over this change in nature without people is that it happened so fast. The doomsday warnings of the death of the earth because of humans seems to be wrong. In less than a month nature has returned to close to its original state. It's a lesson in the wonder of creation.

What's blooming?

The only good thing about this stay home order we've been living with is that we are allowed to get out of the house and walk around in the fresh air and sunshine. Yesterday I took a complete walk around the seminary campus and was amazed at the flowering bushes, trees, and annuals. The grass was a gorgeous green, the green we only get during its first flush of the year. The grass made a beautiful backdrop to all the pinks on the trees and the other colors from the annual bulbs.

Tulips are just about at their peak.

These were new to me as I walked past the dining halls. Their Latin name is Camassia and are a genus of the asparagus family. They are also named Indian Hyacinth and Wild Hyacinth.

And the Carnation Cherry so named because the blooms are big and filled like a carnation. If you click the picture to enlarge you'll see the blooms.

We're behind through no fault of our own

I can across this picture today from April 8, 2017.

Our campus kitchen garden was planted and filled with sturdy growth. This year we are no where close to having any vegetables or herbs looking like this. Partly due to unending chilly weather making it difficult to get anything in the ground and what has been planted has just stayed tucked under the soil. The second reason is the covid19 virus which has kept us solitary and no good way to get to garden centers for starter plants.

We're doing more from seed which takes longer and the new growth from them often is mistaken for weeds. It's a weird year.

And here we stay

The rules are getting tighter and tighter these days. I'm past the point where I can watch the news without feeling it's all hopeless. We're getting tighter on our rules for people coming onto the seminary campus as well. More of our signs have been placed to let local people know what they can and cannot do while using our campus for outdoor walks and bike rides.

As for our daily life, I can hardly bear the thought of going to get groceries, the news makes this seem like I'll be walking into a germ infested, threatening place.

In any event, it's best to keep the news off for most of the day. We are keeping on keeping on. I clean things around here a dozen times a day as well as puttering in the gardens. Dale has been working in the yard and in his isolated office doing seminary work. Last night was just tv, Dale has put on a baseball retrospective on MLB every night this week. Past games re-played. You can just imagine how exciting this is.  Mainly we sit up for awhile and find ourselves going to bed earlier and earlier just to forget about all this.

Here he was last night looking at pictures people put up on Facebook. I will say I, and probably many others, are thankful for such a thing as Facebook. It keeps us in touch, makes us laugh, and gives us information (good of bad).

 

 

A gift from God

During those moments when we aren't obsessed with hand washing and germs and awful news reports, we stand and look at the beauty of the spring we're having. It's all around us, better each day. We're thankful in the midst of all this worry and, yes, fear.

Behind our back yard is a neighbor's most gorgeous cherry tree giving us a perfect backdrop.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with blooms along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

A.E. Housman

Pond yuck

Yesterday, the second or third Monday of our home bound life, I got to work on getting our waterfall/fish pond cleaned up and ready for the season. It will be another day of work because it is truly a mess of string algea and sludge. The waterfall and pumps are turned off in late fall so things can stagnate. We put oxygenators into the bottom with the fish so they have a way to survive.

It was time, however, to get the big filter running again, the water turned ugly around the poor fish. So Kirt came down with the filter pieces and got it running. Meanwhile, I spent time with a strong hoe digging out the string algea which had taken over. Kirt helped with this as well. I bet we pulled at least 40 pounds of this string algea out of the bottom and I got almost that much out of the top. We'd never seen this before and it must have had something to do with the winter weather we had, not hugely cold and very little snow.

Here is some of the algae and the sludge which had to come out today.

Actually algae is really good in gardens, it is loaded with good things like nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. We will get this to our gardens. Here is a look at the sludge we need to pull out today. It too will go on garden beds.

Dale spent some time in the afternoon bringing out bird baths and working up part of his flower beds.

Trouble in those cloth grocery bags

You've seen this and maybe even do this-We want to help the environment by lessening the number of plastic bags which go into landfills. So we opt for the re-usable, fabric tote bags for our groceries. Around here I see people heading into local grocery stores with their tote bag. Or even many totes tucked into a bigger tote. Their groceries get put into them at check-out rather than the store plastic bags.

All good in theory. But it turns out there is an unhealthy downside to these bags. These reusable tote bags can sustain the COVID-19 and flu viruses—and spread the viruses throughout the store.

The COVID-19 virus is just one of many pathogens that shoppers can spread unless they wash the bags regularly, which few people bother to do. Viruses and bacteria can survive in the tote bags up to nine days,

There is a lot more information about these reusable bags here. I will say, I don't use those tote bags for groceries, partly because I'm lazy and forget to bring them, but also they never seemed clean to me. People who put them back in the car after emptying out the groceries often have bags than grow bacteria from former foods which leaked out.

If you do use them, wash them.

Smoking compost

No, not actually smoking it like a cigar, but turning our large campus compost piles yesterday caused steam to rise like a cloud. One of our students, Alarik Morris had the job of using the bobcat to turn the piles of compost that we have on one side of the field house parking lot. All that landscape material comes from the campus during summer and fall clean up of gardens, tree trimming and leaf raking. It all adds up, but it is worth keeping because the rich, black compost we end up with works wonders on all our gardens in spring. It has to be turned over occasionally to help with the breakdown of the plant material. When it's moved, steam floats up like smoke.

It's a beautiful thing.

Rooftop bees

Did you know this? From the venerable Chase Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis' Central West End:

"In April of 2018, our rooftop became home to about 20,000 bees. Today, there is estimated to be 100,000 honeybees up there producing authentic Forest Park honey."

They hoped to get around 15 gallons of honey from all those bees.

 

Hungry Hawk

Yesterday afternoon I got a text telling me to go out and look at the hawk sitting in the tree near our house. He had swooped down, caught a squirrel and flew up onto a big branch to eat. So I went out and was soon joined by a number of students and faculty who'd been passing by. We all watched that big hawk as he stood over the now dead and half eaten squirrel. As you might expect, the conversation eventually turned to who'd actually eaten squirrel and how it was cooked.

Actually, we had a member of our congregation in Venedy come by one day with baked squirrel wrapped in silver foil. I'll never forget this, piping hot squirrel on our kitchen counter. Dale, being the friendly guy he is, tried some and of course said it was a bit like chicken. I did not go near it.