Planting Season
Let’s keep it light tonight. One of the few silver linings of the coronavirus has been an explosive boom in gardening. Seeds and seedlings sold out, baby chicks all scooped up for new backyard coops and a whole generation of children learning how to get dirty and plant their own food.
After all, humans have been gardening for longer than we’ve had the wheel. Amazonian tribes that we’d call hunter gatherers actually cultivate forest gardens. Hobbits loved gardening. There’s something uniquely wonderful about tilling the soil, planting tiny little seeds and helping them grow into plants than invariably taste better than anything we can buy in the stores.
And once you’ve caught the gardening bug, it’s not likely to just go away. Soon you’ll be experimenting with raised beds, starting seeds in early spring under UV light and composting all of your food scraps for that precious black gold (soil) that they become. These are all noble and wonderful pursuits that connect us to nature, connect us to our food and literally imbue our bodies with beneficial bacteria found in those gritty black lines of our hands after gardening. Being outside is therapy all by itself, a communing with nature, an absorption of vitamin D that we need just like the plants we’re cultivating.
The only dark side of the gardening boom is that some people are doing it more out of fear than fun. The potential for food insecurity is in the back of everyone’s minds- certainly in mine anyway. While we’re lucky to live in a country that exports food and produces an incredible bounty, but that industrial agriculture system relied on a restaurant industry that has gone temporarily extinct, leaving only an empty shell of takeout-only behind it. Thousands of hogs have been euthanized, squash tilled back into the soil for fertilizer and milk dump out on the ground like a white blood bath. In the US there are enough food banks, food stamp programs, church efforts and others that most people need not go hungry but that is not the case in other countries, where gardening and subsistence agriculture may mean the difference between life and death.
So let’s be thankful for what we can grow and for all the invisible farmers (most of them Latino and many undocumented) who keep our bellies full and our hearts content in these terrible times. I encourage everyone to find your local farms and sign up for their CSAs. You’ll get the kind of bountiful, affordable and local food every week that the industrial farmers are tilling under, slaughtering and dump out.
Updates
Here on planet Earth we had a (relatively) nice day where death and new numbers were down a good bit from last Monday. It’s worth noting that I don’t bother comparing Sat-Mon to the prior day much anymore because those three days are such an obvious reporting weakness for most countries.
USA
In the US we went back over 1,000 deaths to 1,004. Just below last Monday’s 1,140. Now the trick will be seeing what terrible Tuesday holds. Will this be the first one that goes under 2,000 deaths in a long time? It’s possible. Let’s cross fingers. We had a tiny caseload (again, relatively) at just 18,175 new cases.
Maine did exactly what Maine does- one death and 26 new cases.
Italy feels like they’ve planted their landing- just 179 deaths and only 744 new cases. These are both down about 80% from their highs in March.
Bolivia took a day off from reporting for some reason. No data at all. Never seen this before.
India had only 82 deaths so that’s (relatively) good but their second-highest cases ever at 3,607.
Canada had a pretty good day (and better than last Monday) with just 123 deaths and 1,133 cases (about the same as last Monday).
Russia reported 94 deaths and 11,656 cases- their new all-time record. Annnnd they’ve decided to re-open. I mean, why not, cases are still rising (though I wouldn’t say exponentially), so let’s throw caution to the wind and party…
Sweden reported just 31 deaths and 348 cases. Very low deaths for a Monday and about the same cases. This could be a good sign, but let’s see what the rest of the week brings.
