Saturday, October 10, 2020

Saturday, October 10, 2020

Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2003. Mattie was a year and a half old, and this is really a follow up from last night's photo. If you compare the two photos, you can see that Mattie quickly adjusted to being around farm animals at the Fall festival, and he went from being afraid to having an up close and personal encounter with a goat.

Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins. 

• number of people diagnosed with the virus: 7,706,256
• number of people who died from the virus: 214,286

We spent hours on the deck cleaning out weeds and dead plants. We then migrated some of our plants inside for the winter. We bring in everything from Cana Lilies to our Meyer's Lemon tree. Not to mention our Butterfly Ginger Lily tree. Miss M (my name of the Meyer's Lemon tree) was a birthday gift this year from Peter and the Ginger Lily tree is something we bought in the Outer Banks of NC years ago. It was a tiny little plant back then! But it produces flowers in the shape

of white butterflies and their fragrance is intoxicating. A combination of a gardenia and honeysuckle. 

It takes some doing to make room for all the plants we bring in, but there are many plants we have kept alive for decades. In fact, the rubber tree you see all the way on the left hand side was given to me by a friend when Mattie died. It was a very tiny plant back then. Since that point, I have cut it back many times, but it is a survivor. Eleven years and counting!

This week, I had the chance to bump into an older neighbor of ours who lives on the floor above us. She loves our garden and she said that our greenery has brought her happiness during the COVID lockdowns. Typically Peter and I plant and tend to our garden every April. That did not happen this year, partly because of COVID and the other part is we were trying to figure out how to turn the Foundation's Walk into a virtual event. Then I had two trips to Los Angeles, and by the time I came back, in July, we debated about whether to just leave our deck space dormant this year. We decided not to, as seeing greenery helps our mood. But I am also aware of the fact that we have neighbors who equally enjoy our garden, so that was an incentive to for me to get it done.