Staying Home

How are you starting your days now? In this shelter-in-place world, I get up, maybe do a few chores, get dressed...and put on an apron. It's like my uniform now. When I put on an apron, I feel like I'm ready to tackle the day. It might be cooking something for the freezer, cleaning out drawers, or checking dates on grocery staples to make sure we use them in the proper order. And then there's the endless laundry to be washed, dried and folded. Not even going to talk about unloading the dishwasher. With all meals eaten at home now, the dishwasher is full every day. I like unloading it first thing in the morning. At least as much as I like that chore at all.

Because every day is almost like every other day, I don't have lots to talk about here. So I'll share some photos of our world right now.

Back when we were out and about—after the virus started but before the lockdown—our local businesses put up encouraging posters in storefronts around the town square. These are a couple of my favorites.

This was the movie that was playing when everything stopped. 

Kind of nice to see these encouraging words on my way home from a grocery pick up.

Y'all know we live out in the country. 

Way out in the country where we see signs like this one.

We have mostly stayed home for the last several weeks. Daddy-O has planted a garden. He will have to replant a few things that didn't survive an unexpected cold night.

But this tomato plant in a pot (it was the leftover plant after planting the garden) promises that we will have tomatoes  eventually.

And our iris are beginning to bloom. The purple ones were planted here by my mother-in-law so long ago. These hardy flowers just tend to themselves year after year. The beautiful coral ones came from friend Missy who sent me a box of bulbs—properly called rhizomes—after I admired the Instagram photos of her flowers. When she divided them, she shared with me. Who doesn't love a friend who mails you a box of iris rhizomes?

A large portion of my time is spent in the kitchen.  I've started putting things like carrot and celery sticks in glass containers when I clean them. They last longer that way. The celery here is in a glass dish with a snap-on lid. Don't want anything going bad. Good habits to continue going forward.

How happy I was to find this recipe yesterday on the counter (that is now all neat and clean.) Carol has made this delicious taco soup more than once for our book club gatherings and she always talks about how easy it is. "You just open all the cans and mix them together in the Crockpot." What good timing to find a recipe that does not call for perishable ingredients. It's delicious AND it's easy. What more could you want? 

I've had fun watching my celery root sprout. As a child I grew sweet potato vines but I didn't know about sprouting celery. Funny what new things you learn during a pandemic...and what now brings us pleasure.

We look forward to late afternoons when we enjoy the beautiful view from our backyard. Take a few minutes and sit down with us.

Sometimes we forget that we don't need to travel to find beautiful places. 

It's been right here all along.