In The Time of Plague...

Giovanni Boccaccio's book The Decameron, according to Wikipedia, "is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by seven young women and three young men sheltering in a villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city."

It won't be anything close to the classic Decameron, but I though I could amuse at least myself during this period of "social distancing" by reviving my neglected garden blog and telling a few tales of gardening during the current virus plaguing the world.

Fortunately, gardening is an activity that can be done alone, and if you're a vegetable gardener, it's pretty much a full time occupation, so Cindy is outside right now planting carrots and lettuces.  She won't harvest them for many months, but it does get us looking ahead, toward the future, and whatever the future brings, we'll have something to eat.



Edited to add--It's not my intention to minimize the terrible struggle Italy is having with this deadly and highly contagious disease, but to show that there are positive things we can do while we are responsibly slowing or halting the spread of the disease.  

Dormant Garden

Both the garden and the gardener have been pretty much dormant this winter; the garden is dormant because it's, well, winter, and the gardener is dormant because she's undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.  She's been told to take it easy on the gardening because the chemo is disrupting her white blood cell count and she's supposed to avoid sources of bacterial, viral and fungal infection.  Soil is a major source of bacterial and fungal microbes, of course.  I'm just afraid she's going to develop a case of Black Spot or Powdery Mildew.

However, that hasn't stopped her from doing occasional maintenance of the garden, including harvesting lettuces, and planning the spring planting of the vegetable garden.

Isn't This Lettuce Gorgeous?

I'm not sure what the implications are for the tomato crop this year, but I know she'll work something out.