2021 Life Logs, Day 264: Scattered
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Weather: Another Beautiful Day; High Temp 75, Low Temp 66 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was supposed to be all about gardening, and gardening did get done, but the day ended up a bit scattered. Not that scattered is bad, but the amount of gardening that needed to be done is still on the ‘to do’ list. A member of my book club named Lori, along with her husband John, came over as planned at 10:30 am. We spent almost two hours picking each other’s brain to get at our best tips for gardening. I think Lori has always grown perennials in her yard, but John started vegetable gardening in retirement and is full of enthusiasm. I saw the beginnings of John’s raised beds in April at one of our book club meetings, but now I want to return to see the end result of this summer’s bounty. It is great to find people who have the same interest in gardening that I do, and I look forward to more sharing.
After Lori and John left, I ate lunch and then Shadow and I went outside where I worked on cleaning up the raised beds while Shadow watched. I had hoped to get all three beds cleaned out and ready for fall planting. I did send a text to Heather offering to take Jonah to soccer practice if needed. The message that I got back was not that they needed me to take Jonah to soccer practice, but rather that he would probably not be going because they had been contacted to tell them that he had been exposed to someone with Covid today at school. So now they are dealing with trying to get to the cause of Sam’s ankle problem and figuring out how to deal with Jonah’s exposure. Plus yesterday at recess and split his ‘. Then he hit his lip on his bike handlebars today and resplit it. It is so swollen he can’t eat. Ugh. Nothing I can do about that, however, or about Sam’s ankle, but it did bring up the fact that none of us had purchased any Covid rapid tests. And as I read in the New York Times yesterday, there are very few rapid tests available for purchase in the whole country. I dropped gardening and started a hunt for rapid tests which took the rest of the afternoon. But I was successful in finding 6 test kits. There were none available in Falmouth or Hyannis, at least not that I could find, but I did find the 6 in Mashpee. When I got home, I talked to my sister in North Carolina and found that two people in her assisted living facility have Covid and she is in lockdown. Plus, my nephew’s wife found out today that she has Covid and other family members have been exposed. All have been vaccinated, but the Delta variant doesn’t seem to care. I am so disappointed that we are back to this point again.
When I got home from my Covid rapid test search, I took Shadow for his long walk of the day, fixed dinner, and watched a Woods Hole Oceanographic (WHOI) webinar on the ocean twilight zone and the role it plays in climate change. It was a great conversation. Something the President of WHOI, Peter de Menocal said really stuck with me. “Science isn’t completed until it is communicated.” And tonight the panel did a great job of communicating the importance of the ocean in each of our lives. It was pointed out that this is UN Climate Week, and we got to see some of the light show being projected on the UN building each night this week. 
A deep-sea luminescent creature from the twilight zone called a siphonophore is a crucial agent of carbon removal from the atmosphere. Its beautiful dance is what is being projected. Really beautiful.
Last, but not least, I labeled each of the jars of marinara sauce that are now ready to be delivered to Heather and Jed’s. 
Like I said, it was a scattered day from new gardening friends to tomatoes to Covid issues to siphonophores.
