Pandemic, Day 534

It's March 29 and not much has changed over the past week. We are still locked in at home (figuratively, not literally), the kids are still out of school, and nothing seems likely to return to normal anytime soon. In fact, we have apparently not even hit the peak of the pandemic yet--that should occur around the middle of April. So we continue to stay home, entertain ourselves, and wait.

That said, life is not at a standstill, and we had a few interesting things happen late last week/this past weekend.

First, the house two doors down from us was finally demolished. We've been waiting for this for months, as the chain link fence went up and some of the trees were torn down (though not the big maple in front of the house--I helped save that one). The day of the demo, Friday, happened to be a beautiful day, so Natalia and the kids walked down to see the destruction in action. I joined them for a bit, too.

It's amazing how quickly a house can be torn down. It took only one digger a matter of hours to reduce it to rubble. The kids "wow"ed when the digger's bucket tore through the roof, and they cheered when the final wall was pushed over and the job was done.

For me, seeing the house get bulldozed brought up mixed emotions. It was definitely a bit of an eyesore, especially since nobody has lived there in months. And it was in need of a major update. But it was also a home for a long time--it had history and character of its own, even if it was currently vacant. During the tear-down, I saw that our next-next-next door neighbors had come out to watch as well. The wife was in tears, and had to be consoled by her husband. What memories had that house contained? And now that it is gone, what will replace it? (Side-by-side condos is my guess.)

A house, formerly.

After the excitement of Friday, the weekend came and everything was, basically, the same as the days that had preceded it. No sports, no parties, no nothing. Again. But Saturday was a clear, warm day so we took the opportunity to get going on the garden in the back.

I am certainly no green thumb but one of the reasons I became enamored with our new place was the presence of a large garden in the backyard. Oh, the possibilities! When we moved in August, most of the plants had either bloomed or were overtaken by weeds, and it was clear that the space needed some attention. But we were pretty well fixated on fixing up the indoors, so the garden had to wait until spring. Well, spring is here, and it was time to clear some weeds.

Our idea is to allot about a third of the garden to vegetables. This should be manageable, right? So the first task was to clear out some of the plants, weeds, and bulbs in the future veggie patch, a task that Celia and Lucia helped with.

Celia digging up a Rhododendron.

Lucia tilling the dirt.

We made really good progress! By the end, we had cleared a lot of space. Now we just have to figure out what to plant (tomatoes, cucumbers, what else?), and how to keep them alive. We will start that next weekend, hopefully...as it doesn't look like we will be returning to regular schedules anytime soon.