Masks and Silverbells

Staying at Home means not only Cooking at Home, but Working at Home.  We have been staying busy this week, which is one reason I have not posted to this blog in four days.  I did go up to Town on Monday for a run; I felt that it was time to stretch myself a little by running up Big Bearpen, something I have not done this year.  As always, the climb was relentless, but the views at the top were worth it, the far away lakes of South Carolina hazy in the morning mist to the south, and Whiteside Mountain sharp and bright to the east.

On the way home, I stopped at the Post Office and then Bryson's grocery store for a few things, and for the first time I thought it would be a good idea to wear a face mask, as now recommended by the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci.  I honestly do not think that I am an asymptomatic carrier of the coronavirus - after all, I had just run up a mountain and was not especially short of breath - but that is the recommendation and I do not want to seem uncooperative.  There were only a few other shoppers in Bryson's wearing masks.  "Stick 'em up!" I said to the cashier, and pointed my thumb and forefinger at her.  "Give me all your Purell!" 

When I returned home, we both resumed ongoing yard work.  Martha has relocated many hostas and day lilies from along the road, where they are an inviting snack for deer later in the summer, to within the fenced part of our property.  She has also been clearing brush and cleaning up the area above our driveway, which has grown up over the years and was beginning to look terrible.  Last week, we cleaned up the tree that had fallen on our picnic table, including the irreparable table itself, and this week I cranked up the chainsaw again and cut up another rather large fallen pine and hauled it off.  Everything is greening up swiftly down here, while up on Big Bearpen I had noticed that the leaves were just beginning to bud on most of the trees.  Our Carolina Silverbell tree (Halesia carolina), right off the covered deck behind our gas grill, is beginning to look beautiful.  Its delicate, bell-shaped flowers only last two or three short weeks, and because we are often out of Town in April, I did not realize for a long time that this tree grew here or what it was called.

This morning I ran three miles, most of them with my friend Fred, and then drove to Cashiers to do some more grocery shopping at Ingles.  We want to go to the grocery store as infrequently as possible, but it has been difficult to "stock up" on some things locally.  I found that about half the shoppers in Ingles were wearing masks, and the required six-foot separation was also being observed.  We can only hope that these seemingly extreme measures will, as they say, "flatten the curve," so that we can eventually return to what we can perhaps call "normal" in some way.

I watched some You Tube clips about how to make a mask from cloth bandanas and the like, but then I realized last week that I had the perfect thing, a kind of light, breathable fabric all-purpose scarf that Martha and I both received at the Asheville Half Marathon and 10-K two years ago.  I wasn't sure what a runner might use it for other than a bandana, but I have worn it since then when working outside because I can pull it down over my ears and keep those pesky gnats from attempting to enter what must be an enticing port of entry for them.  But it will slip entirely around my neck, and then I can pull it up over my nose.

Pretty scary-looking shopper!  But these are pretty scary times . . .