COVID 19 — Day ?
May 8, 2020
https://www.flightnetwork.com/blog/21-natural-wonders-in-ontario/
This COVID 19 scare is getting pretty ho hum now for a lot of people. I find myself, even, not thinking about it for hours at a time, although I check in on the news morning and evening just to make sure calamity hasn’t struck.
So now turning to other interests and looking around for things to do, I’m beginning to think of edible wild greens. Yesterday and today, I picked dandelion leaves for my dinner salad and enjoyed them immensely. I wish I could say that I feel like a new woman, that my arthritis has disappeared, I’ve thrown away my glasses, and no longer need to exercise, but alas. Perhaps I have to eat them for a week for all those things to come to pass. I shall certainly report it here when it happens.
Watched a video earlier on how to hunt for morels. Was all set to put on my foraging gear tomorrow until I did a quick check to look for warnings, and sure enough, there is something called a false morel. It might not kill you, but it would make you feel like missing your next meal. I hate to give up the chance of being able to eat free what people pay a fortune for in restaurants, but maybe I should do a little more research first.
The idea of living off the grid has always appealed to me. Back in my really innocent days when I was first married, I envisioned us living in a log cabin raising 10 children round a wood stove while hanging out the washing on tree branches. Fortunately for me, my husband was made of sterner stuff and limited the offspring to three, and the appliances to electric power.
That yearning for the simple life has always run through me though and affects my life in many ways. Now that I find it hard to dig a garden, I’m turning back to my first instincts of living off the land. I shall be making dandelion flower tea, eating the leaves and roots, and checking out everything wild for its edible properties. I’m also going to have a go at building a solar oven this summer. Surely even I, with the engineering ability of a tooth fairy, am capable of doing something as simple as that.
While we’re on the subject of wildlife, I notice I seem to have a fox in situ this spring. I haven’t seen him/her but neighbours out walking their dogs in the evening have seen a fox leaving my back garden after dark.
I don’t dare approach my compost heap in the back as I think he/she’s made a nest there. Somebody certainly has because there is hole leading to a tunnel that goes deep into the compost bin. I know I usually have a skunk around here somewhere, so the nest could be hers, and racoons also live close by. We, the racoons and I, have an unspoken agreement that the night belongs to them. This was made plain to me one evening at twilight a couple of years ago when the racoon peered over a wooden fence at me as it prepared to come into the garden and I was the first to drop my eyes and retreat.
The consequences of all these predators is that the rabbit population is down; in fact, I saw a very large crow land in my garden this afternoon to pick up a rabbit skin lying on the lawn. I don’t know who killed the rabbit, but the crow was there for the leftovers.
Last year I had a friendly rat living under one of the rain barrels, but he seems to have disappeared. Fox? Cat? It seems it’s a battleground out there.
All this to say that my mind is not on the virus much, but I hope that doesn’t make me careless. Familiarity breeds contempt, as the old saying goes, and it also breeds lack of vigilance. Hopefully I’m safe in my garden. However this Sunday is mother’s day, and it’s also the anniversary of my own mother’s birthday, so Philip and Stephanie will be here to celebrate and commemorate. I trust we’ll be safe together if we are careful and do the right things.
I’ll be posting whenever I eat something else from the weed patch.
