Not so distanced from nature
People are starting all kinds of new activities and hobbies since the COVID-19 mess started. That is a good thing unless of course you have turned to new activities that are illegal or questionable at best, not that I would know anything about that. Ha ha.
There’s more time for that work that you don’t consider work because you enjoy it; cooking, baking, refinishing stuff, gardening, decorating etc.
And there’s time for the work that really is work that you’ve been avoiding or putting off because you really didn’t want to spend what time off you have from work doing more work.
That excuse hasn’t worked for us for a few years. Anything we put off isn’t because we don’t have time to do it. We’re just procrastinators. In my opinion procrastination should be considered a personality disorder. If COVID-19 doesn’t make much of a dent in what you’ve been procrastinating about you might as well start looking for a support group.
I procrastinate most about anything to do with paper work. I’m so glad Newman isn’t too bad with that. He procrastinates about organizing things and if he isn’t glad he has me for that he should be.
Before there was COVID
I had already started gutting out cupboards, closets and drawers and put the side porch to rights. Call me a neat freak (ha ha) but paint and tools and caulking belong in the basement.
Aah, the basement. At the beginning of the isolation I said that if we don’t get the furnace room cleared out during this time I would assign it to the Serenity Prayer category and accept the things I cannot change.
However there is still hope as we’re not out of the woods/house yet.
Speaking of woods brings me back to leisure activities.
I’m a garden birder. With my window birdfeeders I’m less than three feet away from my feathered friends when I’m ensconced in the chair that I call home. I thought I spent a bit too much time in that chair before shutdowns and social distancing but now, with not being in a bubble with Janine and not able to pursue our favourite activity of thrift store hunting even when we don’t need anything (to find something that we didn’t know we needed until we found it) I am looking out the window more than usual.
That may be why I’m seeing more and different birds but I’m also thinking that even in urban areas wildlife is responding to quieter less active spaces.
This year I’ve had up to 10 red crossbills trading places at my window at one time. Only once before have I caught a look at a crossbill here and then the binoculars were in order. Goldfinches, chickadees and juncos are always abundant with purple finches and the occasional pine siskin mixed in.
Yesterday I had my very first song sparrow and every day I watch a robin building her nest in the climbing hydrangea outside the sun porch. To top it all off, I have had a furry visitor as well.
If you automatically thought rat because of the birdfeeders you would be wrong. Although my backyard is a couple of streets away from a wooded area I have twice watched a bunny feeding there leisurely, once on the tips of a standard willow which obligingly had bent way over into rabbit reach during Snowmaggedon (it survived) and last week on some white Siberian scilla.
So, do I have more wildlife visiting or am I seeing more because I’m home more?
Would I have seen the rabbit if COVID-19 hadn’t encouraged us to refurbish the sun porch thereby making it a much more pleasurable place for me to hang out? Probably not.
I’ll close with another COVID change observation; marijuana is legal, haircuts are not. It took 50 years but the hippies have finally won. Ha ha.