Being a member of CMC for just about 3 years now, I have really enjoyed reading the stories that everyone has been sharing on the ‘Daily Connector.’ I have felt like I have gotten to know many of you so much better and in a more intimate way than is typical. My previous ‘Connector’ entry was in mid-March as the stay-at-home orders and the global pandemic was beginning to hit home. We had been self-quarantining then after my wife Sally got back from a trip visiting her sister in South Carolina. I mentioned puzzles and am happy to report that the 1,000 piece Italian street scene has been completed.
After several hit-and-misses on the grocery delivery, I have felt more comfortable going out about every week and a half armed with my mask and gloves to do my own shopping at the larger Kroger store when it is more sparsely populated. So far, so good. Since I’m not out and about for my usual 3 hours every morning, the half-acre yard has never looked better. We made a new flower bed along one fence line and filled it with transplanted Rose of Sharon starts, bulbs and annual flower seeds. We also planted a new Ambassador Rose and two hazelnut trees.
Maybe when ‘Sweetie Pie’ stops by for apples again this fall, she will eventually have some nuts to forage as well. Last year she came by regularly with two of her fawns. Speaking of wildlife, all three feral ‘community’ cats (whom we had trapped and spayed several years ago) stop by nearly every day in the morning and evening to eat and hang out. But for the last month there has also been a menagerie on a neighborhood buffet tour to enjoy leftovers - a skunk, a raccoon and a possum! The young skunk had made a home under our back porch and it took me nearly 2 weeks to close off the new entrances that he dug every day. I’d no sooner cement up the base which already had chicken wire several inches deep than I would go out the next day to see another hole underneath the wire. He was a persistent rascal! The entire 14’ x 16’ perimeter has now been cemented down: I think that he finally got the message to take up residence next door where he faced no resistance.
During the Memorial Day weekend, I finished the tile floor in the downstairs bathroom. We’re continuing to do some social distancing with both of our kids who live in town, but we miss going out to dinner and doing other fun stuff with them. We also miss regular day hikes down to Old Man’s Cave, trips out of town either to Pittsburgh, where I grew up and have lots of relatives, or to visit other interesting places like Niagara Falls and Toronto, where we had traveled last May. I’m grateful that none of our family seems to have been hit with the coronavirus, but we hope to someday be tested for antibodies to find out if that has been the source of some of our ailments. I’m looking forward, like everyone else, to the eventual development of a vaccine so that we can all safely visit together in person.
