We survived the Pandemic Winter!

 

Creativity kept our hands and minds occupied and we were able to watch the garden come to life after a long, cold winter.

Still we missed The Wanderer, other nomads and exploring in the beautiful Southwest. On the positive side, we are enjoying the results of some long overdue upgrades including a brand new laminate floor in The Wanderer. Yep, installed by Captain.  

ABN is happy to be rid of the hard-to-care-for, 16 year old carpet!

The Porch has been freshened up with a new rug, more comfortable chairs,

and a custom made bar from Captain’s workshop.

Remember the “work in progress” from the last post? The table for The Big Green Egg is completed and fits nicely into its niche on the deck.

While Captain was busy in the shop, ABN made some changes inside the house. We no longer have a dining room; it has been repurposed into a sewing room.

No worries, you can still come over for dinner! The sewing machine and all the sewing stuff is on wheels and can be easily rolled into another room.

Our pandemic sabbatical is finally coming to an end as we have received our first COVID vaccines and the 2^nd ones are just around the corner. We are so looking forward to sharing wine on the porch, seeing our girls, traveling, listening to live music and just being normal.

Happy Spring, Y’all!

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Living Creatively During a Pandemic

With cooler weather, we can no longer socialize on the porch and patio, so we have turned to creative endeavors.

As the “pandemic era” Amazon packages started to arrive, ABN could not let all that packing paper go to waste. Out came the paint and glitter, 

and Christmas wrapping paper evolved.

And there was a bit of "upcycling."

Captain has been busy in his shop.

It is almost finished!

And then there is this,

As a fixer engineer, Captain comes up with creative ways to fix problems; the problem, frozen fig tree branches. Hopefully the solution is foam pipe insulation.

Last, but not least, with the help of another local sewer, 10 purses are en route to the Sew Powerful headquarters.

These purses will be distributed to 6th grade girls in Zambia after they finish their health hygiene class. Filled with feminine hygiene supplies, the goal is to encourage the girls to attend classes during their menses. Not missing a week of classes each month will give them a better opportunity to pass the exam that allows them to attend high school. If you have a sewing machine,  ABN would love to tell you more (she kept two purses for examples)  or you can visit the Sew Powerful website.

Taking a break from creating, we made the difficult decision to visit Captain’s mom during Christmas. This may seem a bit of hypocrisy, as we have been staunch supporters of the CDC’s COVID recommendations. We had a COVID test 5 days prior (which apparently was lost, but now found during shipping and results promised by Christmas Eve,) and we have pretty much isolated for the past couple of weeks. Sometimes one has to weigh the risk with the benefits. The major risk is to Mom and she certainly thinks our visit is worth the risk. And who can say “no” to their mom. 

 Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas.  May you find peace in the chaos of 2020.

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Living Richly During a Pandemic

 

Doctor appointments, weeding, dental check-ups, cleaning the RV, removing spent flowers, maintenance on the RV, cataract surgery, pruning, sorting mail, mulching leaves; pandemic life has not been much different than any other time we return from a couple of months of traveling.

Sadly we were not able to safely host Tipsy Tuesday. But with the pleasant fall weather, we were able to catch-up with our local friends by inviting a few folks at a time for a socially distanced, bring your own dinner/lunch and support the local restaurants evening; we supplied the wine.  (Credit goes to our friends, Linda and John for that idea.) 

Social distancing on the patio and porch, we hosted 2-3 times a week in October and November. 

And we had travelers stop by!  Again, we kept our socializing outside.

Juanita and Greg stayed a couple of nights in our driveway as they were traveling from their home in Maryland to Texas. 

Heading home to Southern California, Ginny and Scott stopped by for a visit. As we sat on the porch, they shared stories from their 9-month, tour of the country in their 17ft. Casita. 

As always, when we are away from the garden in the summer, we come home to quite a mess.

This is how it looked when we left in August.

This is how we found it on our return in October.

The garden is ABN’s happy place and she was quite content to spend time getting it back in order. We saw our last monarch butterfly on Halloween; so ABN decided she could remove the zinnias, Mexican sunflowers and coreopsis. (We don’t usually have our guests work for a parking space, but ABN was grateful Juanita insisted on helping.)

Cuttings were taken from the geraniums, roses, lantana, lavender and succulents. Tender plants were moved into the greenhouse.

All is ready for a long winter’s sleep.

 

Okay, the blooms need to be removed so energy will go to the plant, but this is so hard to do!

Now that the garden has been put to bed, it is no longer warm enough to gather outside and it’s not safe to gather inside, how can we live richly during this pandemic winter? Fortunately Captain has a shop, ABN has a craft studio and we have plenty of wine! Seriously, we do have some plans for making the most of this time of isolation which we will share in future posts.

As we continue to live richly during the pandemic, we realize not everyone is as fortunate. We will wear our masks to do our part in supporting the health care providers working 12 hours a day wearing layers of PPEs. We will practice social distancing so our neighbor children can return to school. We will shop locally to help our community remain open. We will order take-out from our local restaurants so when the pandemic is over we will have a place to go and celebrate.

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