Day 28 - Errands
2020 April 14
Tuesday
11:30pm:
Today we ran errands.
Our first errand was #Kid6’s 1 year vaccinations.
Our doctor is in Ottawa, so the two us us piled into the truck and headed into the city. She has basically eliminated all in-person appts except for vaccinations, so we were the only people in the entire office other than her admin. I felt very safe, and managed to avoid touching any surfaces outside of her office with my fingers with the sole exception of the button to get into the parking lot — it wouldn’t let me use a pencil to push and would only recognize a finger.
#Kid6 is growing like a weed, and barely made a squawk when getting her three shots.
I took the long drive back to our home in North Grenville, with the windows down and the music cranked up to clear the cobwebs from my brain. It helps that loud music in the truck ensures baby naps.
After lunch, I packed the four youngest into the truck and we headed out again. This time we were on a mission to do a doorstep drop-off of a “5th birthday” gift for #Kid4’s best friend, who is celebrating today. #Kid4 has been very sad for her friend because she won’t get to have a birthday party like their other friends, so she asked me to pick up a gift for her at work when I was in on Saturday. #Kid4 picked it out herself, with the help of some photos, and wrote a message in the card for her friend.
It was a nice drive a bit south of where we live to a more rural part of our area — it reminded me a lot of the area where I grew up in Nova Scotia. It was almost eerie at times.
#Kid4 ran the gift up to the door and knocked and then came back to the vehicle. Her friend came out with her mom to say “hi” from a safe distance, and #Kid4 was so happy to see her.
This isolation stuff is really hard for younger kids to understand, and my daughter (a social butterfly with a solid group of friends) has been missing her friends deeply — there have been tears shed over the past few weeks, and I feel so sad for her. School is the highlight of her week and she misses it so much.
We took the long way back, circling past Merrickville before heading home.
The youngest three fell asleep had had a good nap.
Once back to the house, I set about cooking 1.5 cups of dried black beans in the Instant Pot (I swear cooking dried legumes and chicken stock are what I use it for the most) and took two 500g bricks of ground beef from our freezer to make burritos for supper, and headed out into the yard to get a feel for the veggie garden layout and to check on my flower gardens.
My snowdrops are still going strong.
These originate from a stray bulb that hitch-hiked to Ottawa about 20 years ago with a tiny container of plants my grandmother sent me. She died 5 years ago, just before #Kid4 was born. Every Spring, when these pop up, they’re like a little hello from her. They are my favourite Spring flower and I’m so glad I was able to salvage some from my old garden to bring to our new house.
ello, World!
Related to gardening, not all heroes wear capes.
Some don N95 masks and head out to the post office to pick up their wife’s Indigo order of gardening books.
I’m still waiting on one more book, but 3 of the 4 I ordered have arrived and I will be diving into those tomorrow while the kids do “school work”. The permaculture one, in particular, looks great. I think I will start with the straw bale garden book, though, as I have to figure out where/how to set up our bales to grow cabbage and potatoes. Doing a combination of straw bale and large container gardening will be a good mix for our yard, and provide us with the mulched straw we will need in the fall to work into the beds for next year.
I still miss my old garden, with its mix of fruit-bearing bushes and accent shrubs, rhubarb in with the hostas, and herbs tucked away here, there, and everywhere. It’s exciting for me to be starting to get more of a vision of how this new yard will take shape. I don’t like to plan things too much. I’m more of an organic garden designer — I like to see how it takes shape over time on its own, and be more of a guiding hand in encouraging things to grow where they thrive instead of planning it out to the tiniest detail. Doing it this way makes me feel more in tune with my plants and their growth cycles.
I prefer the thrill of garden surprises.
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