Shelter-in-Place Day 14

Today I took another long walk, trying to enjoy the natural world as I know a lot of people are now. I also did a little bit more yard work, and a little bit more housework. It's the birthday of my birth father, my husband's sister, and a friend from the library. But the big news that marks the day is that the county has decided to extend the shelter-in-place order for another four weeks, until May 3rd.

No. C19-05
Extending The Shelter In Place Order No. C19-03 Beyond April 7, 2020 To May 3, 2020.
DATE OF ORDER: MARCH 31, 2020
Read Health Order Appendix – Social Distancing Protocol »Frequently Asked Questions »Detailed Summary of Changes – New Shelter Order issued on March 31, 2020 (PDF) »Please read this Order carefully.  Violation of or failure to comply with this Order is a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both.  (California Health and Safety Code § 120275, et seq.; Cal. Penal Code §§ 69, 148(a)(1).)UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF CALIFORNIA HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTIONS 101040, 101085, AND 120175, THE HEALTH OFFICER OF THE COUNTY OF SONOMA (“HEALTH OFFICER”) ORDERS:
1. This Order shall become effective at 12:01 a.m. on April 1, 2020 and will continue to be in effect until 11:59 p.m. on May 3, 2020, or until it is extended, rescinded, superseded, or amended in writing by the Health Officer or the State Health Officer.

etc.

It spells out the details of essential businesses, and I hope it cuts down on the number of bored people shopping for flowers to plant. The hardware store where S. works is considered essential, but under item 13, which defines "essential," there are caveats about cosmetic versus safety purposes:

1. Hardware stores;

1. Plumbers, electricians, exterminators, and other service providers who provide services that are necessary to maintaining the habitability, sanitation, and operation of residences and Essential Businesses, but not for cosmetic or other purposes;

1. Arborists, landscapers, gardeners, and similar service professionals, but only to the limited extent necessary to maintain the habitability, sanitation, operation of businesses or residences, or the safety of residents, employees, or the public (such as fire safety or tree trimming to prevent a dangerous condition), and not for cosmetic or other purposes (such as upkeep)

This means another month at home. I hope to use it well. 

 

Shelter-in-Place Day 13

Another swarm today. This makes three in nine days, and this time I'm not sure whether it was the larger "Shakespeare" Hive (so named because I received it 4/23/18), or the smaller "Mountain" Hive, given to me as a split from Nick on Sonoma Mountain. I'm going to try to link a video to this blog. It's as the swarm just started to find the queen in the oak tree. I'm standing in the middle of it all. Another three hours to carefully box up. Again, no stings.

Here's what it looked like once they landed:

On the coronavirus front, I'm going to let the Johns Hopkins map tell it all this time:

Shelter-in-Place Day 12

Sunday.

Just as I despaired about any one else helping with projects around the house, D. improved upon his live rat trap for the plague that visits our back yard at night to snag chicken feed, which seems to be a target no matter how well we try to cover it.  We'll see how it goes. I hate to kill anything, even these troublesome rats. D. counted 11 in our backyard the other night! But if we lived in the country, it might be even more of a necessity than it is now to deal with the intrusions from nature. So I tell myself I should get used to it. In the meantime, I know that if it were just up to me, I'd be driving each captured rodent into the hills and letting it go to live out its days. Or be eaten by a raptor.

So much for this being any kind of pandemic blog. How self-centered.

New York is in a very bad state, with the National Guard preparing beds in advance of what is still coming.

I donated toward a non-profit that is getting masks sent to the US by the thousands. It's legit, because a friend knows the woman doing it personally and has already seen masks come in to the hospital where her husband works as a result. It feels like such a small contribution. But it's something besides just staying home, in my own house and in my own head.

Shelter-in-Place Day 11

I've found myself slightly irritable now and then during the last couple of days. But I can recognize it's happening, feel it, and not act on it. It passes quickly, and usually I can identify what's going on.

It could be that I'm getting a little stir-crazy. But more often, it's a sense that I'm accomplishing things on our long around-the-house to-do-list while those around me (especially D.) literally play video games for hours. Or at any rate, sit in front of a screen for hours. I do too, honestly, but almost always at the end of the day, after I've done "all the things" or at least enough of them to feel I've been productive.

It's true that some of that screen staring might be programming or research. It's true that by the time I'm zoning out in front of the computer or Netflix, other people are just starting to get into gear and get things done. But if I were to express my real feelings about the hours of what I consider wasted days (and we only have a limited number of them!), it would be ugly. And not worth the fallout. Writing about it here is as close as I'll get, most likely. Until I can find a kind way to speak my truth "quietly and clearly" as the Desiderata would have it.

Come to think of it, when I just now went to make sure I was quoting that text correctly, I realized that it represents almost entirely the guidelines by which I have tried to lead my life. Whether or not it has been conscious, I've applied the whole thing to how I try to move in the world, what my beliefs and values are. I remember memorizing it as a child, mostly, when it hung on a shellacked piece of wood in my nana's mobile home. I have carried it with me all this time. It has shaped what I think.

So there. A self-discovery for the day.

Shelter-in-Place Day 10

I might as well document the look of the painted living room wall. Take it from me, it's much better than it was before, when it was full of clutter and an ugly splotchy dark green. The peregrine painting is from my birth dad. Moira is drinking water at the edge of the scene.

What does it say that we have a Burne-Jones print and a RoboCop diarama in the same cabinet? 

That D. and I live here. That's what it means. 

The days are indeed starting to blur. But tomorrow is a weekend, so D. will be home. The rain is coming. I've done some weeding and watched the smaller hive do a dry run of a swarm. I tried to identify the emotions I was feeling while I waited to see if they were really going to leave, and while I prayed they wouldn't head east, into the yard of the neighbors I don't know, whose house sports a thin blue line flag, like this one:

I think the primary emotion was resignation, with some kind of stoic support underneath it. The same emotions that I feel about the shelter-in-place - although in that case they're under a whole lot of guilt-tinged happiness about being home and relief that I have a federal and state-mandated excuse not to socialize. 

Shelter-in-Place Day 9

I admit that the days do blur a bit as I try to keep track of them.

Today, just as I was about to drive D. to work, the Shakespeare hive swarmed again. I was able to watch it swarm. I'd jinxed myself Saturday when I said that was the easiest swarm ever to put in a nuc.

Here's today:

The good news about this one? It landed in the back yard next to the smaller "Mountain" colony. The bad news, it wasn't just *on* the umbrella, or even just *under* the umbrella. It took nearly 3 hours of patient coaxing and careful disassembling to find that the queen was hiding in the very bottom of the pole, on the inside! Phew! This one goes to the next name on the "needs bees" list. I'd known it was going to swarm because when I'd gone into the hive Sunday, I'd heard piping so I closed it right back up. I'd added space but couldn't get into it further to find queen cells.

Shelter-in-Place Day 8

Today was remarkable because I received a quick and not automated rejection email from a literary journal. If I were taking part in the 100 rejections a year community in one of my FB groups, that would be one to add to the list.

I spent the day painting the living room. I guess these projects always take longer than you think they will. It feels frivolous while so many things are happening that are so much more important - a nephew with a burst appendix, a half-sister in ICU with heart problems - but not, as far as we know right now, coronavirus. But I can't seem to not take advantage of the shelter-in-place order to complete things that have needed doing for a long time. In spite of the heartache so many are feeling, I am so happy at home.

Shelter-in-Place Day 7

Well, the rain came today. And so I set about starting the project of painting the wall in our living room that had been a dark green, and was spotty at best, especially where the 450 gallon fish tank had lived.

It took until 9pm, with a few taxi-driving breaks, to get the primer up. Tomorrow, I hope to put on the "flaxseed" that is already on the adjoining entranceway wall. Because the corner from one room into the other is rounded, it would be awkward to transition to another color. I just hope the flaxseed isn't too dark. Of course, anything would be dark compared to the arctic primer I spent hours putting on.

In truth, most of the time is spent cleaning and taping. I'm not the neatest painter, although I'm better than I used to be - so paint really saves me, every time.

I saw part of the White House televised conference today. President Trump hoping to get the economy rolling by Easter. Because it seems like that would be a "beautiful day" for that to happen. Somebody better inform the still-spreading novel coronavirus about his plans.

Shelter-in-Place Day 6

Today, I conquered a fair bit of dread and anxiety and tried a zoom conference for the first time. I had no choice, because it meant seeing and hearing my poetry friends from the MFA program, and I wasn't going to miss that. It turns out that there is almost nothing to it, and it went well, and I am so grateful that I could spend that time with them. I wrote each one afterward to send my gratitude, support and love.

I normally don't even like to call people on my cell.  It's another behavior that this pandemic is changing.

Later, I attended a virtual poetry reading via zoom, with 40 other people. While covid19 is a tragedy for many, it must be an unbelievable boon for the makers of zoom and other videoconferencing software.

I made the mistake of making fresh bread just as my resistance to sugar and flour was at a low point, and didn't so much fall of the wagon as hurl myself there. At least I saw the binge coming, watched it happen, and can say, yep, that's what that was. Tomorrow is another day. But what I learned from this is that almost certainly if I've done something difficult during the day, or if it's been a long stressful day and I've reached the end of it, my habit is to self-medicate with sugar and alcohol or both. I need to find another form of recompense. Some ideas: knitting, a cup of tea, stretching, a walk around the block, or all three. But not at the same time.

Britain is under very firm shelter-in-place orders. I watched Prime Minister Boris Johnson's address to the people of Britain, and he seemed to be taking things very seriously. I understand that he may be cut of a similar cloth to the blustering buffoon we have in office, but at that moment, I appreciated his gravitas, and wished he was our leader.

They've closed all Sonoma County Parks because people were essentially flocking to them and congregating too much for safety's sake. But the rain is coming, so D. and I wouldn't have been going to Schollenberger anyway. I'm glad I checked the Shakespeare hive when I did, and gardened while I could.

an effort to track down how rats are getting into the attic, and to see whether they were nesting there, I crawled around for a while. I found that a few of the girls' shelter projects had been raided for nests, and had to throw them out. S., burned out by working so many hours and helping customers with zeroconcept of "essential shopping," said she didn't care if I got rid of all of those early childhood projects. 

In the interest of space - and in the face of lack of interest - I did toss these beauties, but not before taking pictures, which are of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, a sailboat (2nd or 3rd grade?), the signature of Elizabeth 1 on Mary, Queen of Scot's death warrant - from R/N's People to People project, and a yarn design.

                     

                                                       

Shelter-in-Place Day 5

Another day of working in the yard because I thought the rain would be coming soon. The skies have stayed clear for now, and the yard is looking better.

I tried to get into the large hive to check for queen cells, but I didn't get far before I found myself performing surgery to extract new comb built sideways outside the follower boards - honey, and even some drone brood. I also heard piping. So I just added another box and frames, pressed the new comb on wired frames (note to self: get large rubber bands for this task!), and closed it all back up. It's now six medium supers tall. I'll have to wait until the shelter-in-place order is lifted and I can get help to clean it up more. But also, if there's a new queen, I don't dare mess with it at all for a while.

I'm hearing more and more that we should only be making essential trips, and I admit to feeling guilty for buying paint yesterday, but it's a done deal now.

Tomorrow, I'll try my first zoom conference. I find myself intimidated by, not the technology, but the social interaction. Shyness, or something else? I think it's just a manifestation of anxiety, so I'm accepting it and moving on.

Johns Hopkins reports over 330,000 cases and over 14,000 deaths (30 in California) - but nearly 100,000 recovered, which is the number I try to focus on.

This morning I sent poems to an online journal known for a quick response time. I will send out more tomorrow. Writing and submitting always takes longer than you think it will, but I have the amazing luxury of time right now. I am grateful for that unexpected gift from the pandemic.

Shelter-in-Place Day 4

For me, anyway, today was as good a day one could hope for during a pandemic. I read poetry and wrote poetry, looked into options for submitting poetry, gardened (i.e., pulled weeds) and then just as I was starting to inspect my larger hive, which I knew was likely to swarm soon, it swarmed.

This time I was able to spot the bees congregating in my neighbor's back yard. I went next door, and sure enough, he was already aware of what was happening. Together, we watched them settle in the same tree where a swarm had settled last year. Such a cool neighbor to be open to the process.

Here's what it looked like about five minutes after the queen landed on the tree:

It turns out that the next person who answered her phone on the the Sonoma County Beekeepers Association (South Cluster) Needs Bees list (yes, there is such a thing) is the same person who got last year's swarm from the same location. Unfortunately, that swarm didn't overwinter. Perhaps this one will.

While I'd waited for her to come, I inspected, and expanded, the smaller hive and gardened more. In between all these activities, I paused now and then to read and eat. I also drank lots of water and listened a little to an audiobook by Tara Brach. So it could be argued that it has been a healthy and productive day. I am feeling so strangely content while the nation and the world grapple with SARS-CoV-2. Selfish behavior? Coping mechanism? Or just living in the moment, appreciating what I can? Maybe a little of all three.

Here's a video of the bees starting to go into their swarm box, exposing their Nasonov's glands by sticking their bottoms in the air and then fanning. This gland produces a pheromone to tell the others to come home, where the queen is. Notice the bees marching right into the nuc from the tree. This was the easiest swarm I've ever captured. I got the queen in the box with the first scoop of bees.

Shelter-in-Place Day 3

The cats demonstrate social distancing.

Already, the days are starting to blur a little. I am glad I have some routine - to bed around 10 or 11, up by 7 or 8.  I take S. to work and I pick her up, and in between I do a few other things. Today, most of the day was spent weeding, which was very satisfying.

There's still plenty to do, but tomorrow, which I have to keep reminding myself is Saturday, I'll do a full hive inspect of both hives. The weather should be just warm enough. Today, it was just too cool to check, but in the afternoon, the larger of the two colonies seemed to swarm. I took video and pictures of it, but didn't see where they went if they did swarm.. I walked for about 45 minutes around the neighborhood but never found them. Maybe they were practicing? Maybe they have not yet been discovered or have been killed or were reported and no one in SCBA on the swarm crew got back to me to see if it might have been my hive. It's hard to care about them and have zero control - although I did put out my nuc and a swarm trap. I also hope the oak tree continues to attract anyone who decides to swarm.

I'm doing the Whole Life Challenge because I need to accountability to help learn to focus on self-care. And because it's a pop-up and free. (Thank you, WLC folks!)

Listening to Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance, too. It's helping keep me from falling deeply into my usual self-indulgence/self-criticism cycle.

NYC and Illinois are now also shelter-in-place. Health care officials are trying desperately to raise enough alarms for people to respond in a way that will mitigate the situation, but our leadership is not ideal in terms of inspiring positive responses.

While I am keeping tabs on the situation through various news sources, I'm also grateful for how the natural world carries on regardless. 

Here's a shot of the front of the swarming (?) hive. After things died down, I could see that many workers were fascinated by a few spots near the front where I think a queen had been, but I never saw her.

Shelter-in-Place Day 2

Today Governor Gavin Newsom called for all Californians to shelter in place - stay home and avoid going out as much as possible. This is from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:

The governor earlier in the day asked the president to deploy a U.S. Navy medical ship to help expand the state’s medical capacity and warned that if drastic measures are not taken, more than half of California’s residents could contract the new coronavirus.

(!)

The number of deaths recorded world-wide has exceeded 10,000 and Italy reports more deaths than China reported. There are those who question the numbers from China.

Today I left the house three times: to take S. to work, to get rat traps and copper tape to keep slugs from the new vegetable garden, and then to pick up S. from work.  I spent as much time as I could gardening and writing. Both beehives are doing well and I was serenaded by buzzing while I worked.

N. has gone to stay with A. at his father's for a while. His father is high-risk, so there may be little back-and-forthing. But we know where to reach her if we need to.

It's dark now, and in the backyard, D's live trap just caught not one but two rats. I hate killing anything when there is so much death around right now anyway, but I'm also more determined than ever to protect plants that we need to make food from the plague of rats that invades our back yard every night. We see four or five scatter every time we turn on the light on the chicken coop between 7pm and 9pm.

I'm not at the point of buying guns or ammo, nor do I think I would ever be - although I have heard that sales have sky-rocketed. I feel a very long way away from that sense of survivalism or martial law - but it's no longer so far outside the realm of possibility. Planting veggies is my version of feeling self-sufficient.

Yesterday I learned that a friend had to euthanize her dog. Much more significantly, today I heard of the death of a previous coworker. I can't quite process that bit of news yet. I knew him well and he seemed too young to die, even though I heard he'd been ill lately, and I hadn't seen him since I left my last job. I'm feeling so sad for his former wife and his three kids, who must be between 20 and 25 now. Too young to lose a father, especially in the middle of all of this. 

Shelter-in-Place end of Day 1

I found myself almost not writing this post, and it's only the second day in a row that I'd intended to log this forced social distancing we're all experiencing. Not much of a streak if you can't go more than one day in a row.

Mornings are better for writing, I've found. I managed to spend some time at it before noon, and even mid-day. Primarily finishing some notes on poems from my critique group. I assiduously worked on that rather than working on a clunky poem or two I'm trying to write. I also took a break in the early afternoon to go on a dog walk with a friend. We were fairly compliant - air hugs, stayed a few feet apart, bumped elbows to say good-bye. Later, I worked on the garden until the rain drove me in. Then I made dinner for the family and lost myself to episodes of The Office on Netflix. How many of us are binge watching things as an escape between news stories?

The recorded numbers from Johns Hopkins right now:
218,814 confirmed cases
8,810 deaths
84,113 recovered

In California, I watched the deaths jump from 4 to 6 to 8 to 16 over the last few days. The figures will get worse, maybe even much worse, before they get better. But for now, stores still have lots of groceries (although, inexplicably, no potatoes and not much iodized salt). People are fairly mellow, the streets are quiet, and I think about the unexpected blessings that can come from difficulties.

A poem has been making the rounds, delivered into my inbox through Larry Robinson of Rumi's Caravan fame. It also apparently showed up on the Nextdoor app. It's by the poet and minister Lynn Ungar, and it is a message of hope and encouragement posted on her website 3/11/20.


Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

And here's a picture from today's walk. I think it's Ranunculus calfornicus, the California buttercup. Not the best shot, but they were a pretty burst of color at our feet.

Shelter in Place Minus 4 Hours

As I open up a new page to write my first blog post for the first time in a very long time, I am thinking, "Begin as you mean to go on."

We received word a few hours ago that the county is to shelter-in-place until April 7th, the seventh bay area county to do so since the novel coronavirus (which research told me yesterday is named SARS-CoV-2) started to really dig in enough for even the POTUS to pay attention.

With the opportunity to spend three weeks at home, not working, not traveling, I am both extremely grateful and hopeful that I will use the time well, and at the same time I'm cognizant of the difficult circumstances that have brought us to this point - circumstances that for some have been, or will be, fatal.

I know I am not the only person walking around the county, the country, even the world, with R.E.M.'s "The End of the World as We Know It" running through my head like a constant low-volume soundtrack. This is a defining point in history. It is not the first viral threat to humanity, and it will certainly not be the last. But I can't remember the word "pandemic" being used before in my lifetime like this. We are united in our concern. As a world. We watch the numbers rise and fall, and we fight to keep the charts from spiking in the U.S. as they have elsewhere, like Italy, where no amount of accordion playing from one balcony to another can offset the grim reality of too many bodies stacking up to be buried.

It's very, very easy to feel as though we are stepping into the backstory of a novel of dystopian fiction. And at any rate, I am compelled to write. What else to do with the time I'll have? (Although a list has already been forming in my mind: go through paperwork, inventory the house, plant the vegetable garden, weed belongings inside and unwanted plants outside, hike, submit writing, lift weights, watch that yoga video, play games with the family...) But top of the list? When I think of beginning as I mean to go on? Write. And then write some more.

This is pre-day-one of the shelter-in-place. What strange times we live in.

Photo courtesy of the CDC: