Plant a Flower Day

 

 

Or how about a herb pot? Parsley, thyme, mint, oregano.  Both pretty and useful.  I've had that china bowl for years and it's quite fragile for an outdoor pot.  My heart might also break when it finally does. I'll never find another one like it.

The sun is out, the sky is blue, the mountains in the distance gleaming white. What's not to like about Seattle in early spring?  Other than the endless days of gloom and chilly rain. Ha. But we have short weather memories here and all is soon forgotten.

Home Depot garden shop was busy yesterday. Everyone looked happy, as far as I could tell with the masks. I think people will go nuts this summer, spending money, having a good time, indulging themselves with old social pleasures. It's been an entire year of no, no, no, you can't do that. 

There was an article in the NYT yesterday titled "Seattle's Virus Success Shows What Could Have Been Done." Interesting. One year after the start of the pandemic, the Seattle area has the lowest death rate of the 20 largest metropolitan regions of the country. 

No big surprise, since we've had strict restrictions in place for over a year, even last summer when cases were low. The public health message has stayed basically the same, not what you want to hear, but the urban public largely complied. 

With so many high tech jobs in Seattle, more people could work from home. That also helped. Now we've finally moved to Phase 3 reopening, which means restaurants can serve at 50% capacity indoors for the first time. There will actually be fans at the Mariner's home opener.

In other parts of the country, life seemed to go on like normal and it's just human nature to resent that. The trade off, of course, was more sickness and death. None of our relatives came down with Covid, in Seattle or anywhere else. Other families and communities were hit very hard. How lucky we are.

President Biden gave an excellent address to the country last night. (I wish his speeches got half as much media attention as his predecessor did!) It was realistic but also hopeful.  The vaccines are excellent, the trends are improving, the county is healing in many ways.  At some point, the constant drumbeat of negativity stops motivating us. We also need optimism and hope for the future. 

St. Patrick's Day is coming up and you know what that means-- corned beef on sale. I'll make ours this weekend. We have "Brigadoon" from Netflix starring Gene Kelley dancing around Scotland. What the heck, it's Celtic.