Pandemic Diaries Week #11

26 May 2020

My sister-in-law (J) needed to drive down to Cape May for an errand, and I went along with her.  Took care of the errand, and the friend she saw (masked and distanced) suggested we continue down the road to the beach.  So we did.


It turned out that this was Higbee Beach, on Delaware Bay.  The bay is so huge, we couldn't even see the other side!

My best friend from high school was a Higbee, so I had to look up why this is called Higbee Beach.  This one and a half mile sandy beach was named for Joseph Higbee, a boat pilot on the Delaware River.  In the 1800s, people would sail down to Cape May from Philadelphia, and Joseph was a well-known river pilot.  

There are a variety of local legends about Joseph Higbee who owned the beach and the woods behind it - or more accurately, the legends are about his brother Thomas Horres Higbee.  Thomas inherited the property, and the story is that had a strange plan to keep the land in the family.  He allegedly told a friend that he wanted his niece to have the property after his death, so he made arrangements to be buried there, knowing she wouldn't sell the property with his body interred there.  Well, the niece didn't sell.  But after HER death, Thomas's remains were moved from the beach to a church cemetery, along with the niece.  And the property was sold.

Of course, now there are stories of ghosts haunting the beach at night, specters of an old bearded man who roams the beach.  We have no idea if this is true or not, but it makes for an interesting story.

The ferry still leaves from the mouth of the Delaware River, and we saw it pulling out into the bay.  Did a little bit of walking, dipped my toes in the water which was quite chilly.  I tried returning a horseshoe crab to the sea, but I think I was too late.

But it was a pretty day, and we enjoyed our impromptu visit to Higbee Beach and Wildlife Management Area.

More information:  https://njaudubon.org/wp-content/wildlife/DelawareBayshoreTrails/Sites/tabid/440/Scope/site/Guide/DELBAYSH/Site/35/Default.html


27 May 2020

I've been corresponding with various state and local agencies to find out about the sign for the senior park down the road.  The state agency said they have no problem with us making a sign, but that we should speak with the Linwood township government.  I found that the parks are under the city's Department of Recreation (and presumably parks and recreation).  I tracked down an email and sent them our offer to create a sign.

The departmental clerk said she'd need to see if a new sign had been ordered, and then wrote back to say it had not.  The department would like to see a sketch as well as the dimensions for our sign.  So I have to sketch out my plan, and I also measured the sign that is already there.  Once I submit that, we'll be all set.

My SIL suggested doing a mosaic, which would be fun, but heavy to hang.  I think we'll stick with some kind of exterior grade wood with exterior paint, and we'll work on getting the letters cut out with a router or whatever one calls those tools.


28 May 2020

Our little car Mr. Tiki is here!!!  Yay!

We kept our car from our year in Arizona and summer in Washington, and found a vehicle storage center in Bellingham.  Tiki was in an indoor garage, slot #2007 - so we envisioned the car pretending to be a James Bond vehicle with all those hidden abilities.  You know, an aquatic car that also flies, with guns under the headlights and taillights, maybe bulletproof, and probably self-driving as well.


Anyway, my brother picked little Tiki up last week, made sure he was running, and got him ready for travel.  Richard made arrangements with a vehicle shipper, and Tiki was picked up and loaded onto a truck for his trip across country.  It took just over a week, and we now have a happy car reunion!

He'll adjust to this new coast, and we'll adjust to driving around on the labyrinth of streets and highways and pikes that make up the New Jersey roads.


30 May 2020

On our walks, I always notice the flowers and take photos.  I do love flowers, however short their lives might be.  But now, we seem to find all sorts of quirky lawn ornaments.   

One house surrounded by trees on three sides had a lovely little wishing well filled with flowers.  They also somehow had an odd wooden two-legged deer propped up against the tree.  No idea why no one carved four legs when they were creating this deer of wood, but hey, who am I to argue?

Another house had old random bits of furniture planted with flowers: an old stove, an old school desk and chair, a bed headboard, an old treadle sewing machine table.  Gorgeous flowers and amusing little planters of repurposed furniture.

There were the usual little cement animals, including a happy rabbit family.  And a few elegant herons in some kind of metal casting.

The elementary school nearby has a school garden, not well maintained with schools closed at the moment.  But the clematis filling the tub were looking gorgeous, and I also enjoyed the cement stepping stones in the garden, embellished with glass marbles.

The school must have a creative art teacher - there are several panels of plastic-bottle-top mosaics hanging on the exterior of the school.  Really, each spot of color is a bottle cap.  What a great art and science lesson about plastics, re-using or recycling or upcycling non-biodegradable items!

And the peonies are especially beautiful right now.

I have one more chapter of what happened this week, but it's going to be enough for an entire blog post unto itself, so please check back for another pandemic break!

Pandemic Diaries Weeks #9 & #10

13 May 2020

Oh my goodness!!!  Every time I publish one of the blog posts, I like to check our statistics for the week.  I can see total number of hits for the week, where the viewers live (just by country), and what specific blog posts are read that week.

Well, we're up to over 212,000 hits!  That isn't 212,000 viewers, but that is 212,000 views on the blog since we began in 2012.

Most amazing, however, is that in the past seven days we've had nearly 1000 hits from Turkmenistan!!!  Turkmenistan!!!!  We haven't even been there, so there isn't a blog about visiting there!  But I can just imagine some people in Turkmenistan, all bored with this self-isolating stuff, who somehow ran across our blog, and are now reading it.  Who knows, maybe we're a big hit there!

So hello to our Turkemen readers!!!!  Welcome!!!  Ertiriňiz haýyrly bolsun, türkmenistan dostlarym!!

Our second largest group of readers is from the US (215 hits this week), and then Italy (173 hits).  Hi there to all our fellow US citizens, i buongiorno ai miei amici italiano!!

And a big hug to all our friends in the US Virgin Islands, a small community but who hold a large place in our hearts (and #4 in our readership this week).


14 May 2020

I went out for my walk today, taking photos of flowers and just enjoying the sunshine.  My usual route is to walk to the cul de sac at the end of the street, come partway back, and turn up a side street to go around the block - then onward to the bike path, maybe a bit along that area, then back.

As I walked down the street, a laughing gull flew by and landed in the street about eight feet in front of me.  The gull squawked and waddled toward me, stopping maybe four feet away.  I said hello, explained I didn't have food for it, took a few photos, and continued on my way.  This happened three or four times, me walking further along the street and around the cul de sac, gull flying after me, gull landing in front of me and then walking toward me with a few words of gull language!

Eventually I turned up the side street as usual, and turned around to tell the gull that I didn't want him to get lost if he/she was looking for their mother gull.  Apparently the gull thought the same thing, because just as I snapped another photo my friend the gull took off flying.  

Okay then!


15 May 2020

Today is Endangered Species Day, and the Sierra Club sponsored an online art workshop drawing some of those animals.  I missed the timing of the workshop, but I looked at the style of the instructor, and I decided I'd draw a sea turtle.

The instructor's style is sort of a stained glass effect, with black lines and divided up spaces.  So, my sea turtle is swimming through sort of a broken up sea (and NOT a net, even though it kind of looks like that).

Happy wild and free sea turtles on Endangered Species Day!


17 May 2020

This neighborhood seems to specialize in unique and fun wooden playhouses for children!  At the end of our street, where it meets the bike path, we have the Shark Treehouse.  Really, just a basic treehouse with a little cupola on top, and windows - and then painted with a big tooth-filled shark smile.  I find this to be a really funny treehouse.  I mean, did you ever see a shark in a tree?  (Well, there are the Sharknado movies, but the sharks fell into the trees, they didn't live in the trees.)

Then further along in who knows what direction, there's a wooden train in the yard!  It looks just like the wooden train sets our brothers had when they were little!  Perfect size for children to climb into the engine and pretend to be train engineers, and a second car for passengers!  I just imagine what fun it would be to have this great train in your yard, with all the neighborhood friends coming over to play train all summer long!

Don't you wish we had these sorts of playhouses for adults?  I certainly do!  Okay, well, there is also the house with a lovely wood gazebo, screened in all around.  I guess that counts as an adult playhouse.  And it really is rather romantic in the beautiful yard.  But it isn't as much fun as a shark treehouse or a two-car train.


18 May 2020

When one is sheltering in place, or safer at home, or whatever you are calling it in your state, even a trip to a specialty supermarket is an event.

BIL, SIL, and I went out to the Trader Joe's that is closest to their house.  This entailed nearly an hour driving along the Black Horse Pike, then the White Horse Pike, and other roads.  The network of roads around here is quite confusing.  But the Horse Pikes just sound so colorful.

Face masks on, people lined up for entrance.  Well, most people had face masks on, a few saved them for entering the store.  And the line of people were fairly spaced apart for social distancing.  Only one or two people were allowed in each time a shopper left the store.  S and J lined up, and I opted to take a walk.  It was an overcast sky with some major wind, but this shopping center had gorgeous flowers.  

There were blue to purple pansies, looking like little flower faces in the planters.  Don't they look like little pixie faces? 

The roses are rugosas roses - they were specifically bred to look like old fashioned roses with those wide open petals.  SO fragrant!  I really like the bushes that decided to have both pink and red roses, even if it's only a few of the secondary color.

I wish I had more to say so I could include more flower photos!


21 May 2020

Our neighborhood also includes a park for senior citizens.  This is the park where J lost me one day when we were out walking - I was uphill at the far end of the park, communing with the lovely azaleas.

It really is a pretty park, and I like to wander there while J continues on her speed walking interval.

We noticed that the wooden sign for the park is falling apart a bit - there are several holes in the center, maybe from insects, possibly from woodpeckers.  Winter weather is never good for painted signs, and this particular sign looks like it had a rough winter.

So I found the phone number for the Green Acres program which is responsible for parks in the state.  I called them and they gave their email address.  I wrote a note informing them that this sign could use a replacement, and offering to make a new sign.  I think that would be a fun project.  S (Richard's brother) has some of those carving tools to incise the letters, and I have the art skills to draw the letters and learn how to do the carving.  And then we can paint the sign, and put it up.

I figure we have the time, we have the talent, and we need more projects.  I'm good at finding things like this to do!

I'll end with more flower photos (and one pensive garden gargoyle).  I know, not everyone loves photos of flowers.  But they remind us there there is still beauty in the world, that this is springtime and with spring is rebirth and hope.  So even in the times of pandemics and death, we need to remember that there is also beauty and hope.  To not despair.  Our family lost a cousin to this virus this week, so yes, I know there is loss.  There is grief.  There is mourning.

But we're human beings, and we can't live our lives focusing on the negative only.  We're rational, we think, we plan.

So we know there is a future.  There is hope.  And we need to hold onto a sense of optimism, that we as humans will survive.  We also need to learn from this experience of a worldwide pandemic and shutdowns.  We humans are interconnected, no matter what country we live in.  What happens in one nation affects us all.  What we do to the climate in Turkmenistan affects the climate in Guatemala.  What we do to the ocean in Mauritius affects the ocean in Alaska. 

So yes, stop and smell the roses, wherever you live.  Stop and think about how to keep the roses growing, how to keep the humans growing, how to keep the air and water clean enough for the roses and the people and the bees to survive.  

We don't have a Planet B.  We only have one Earth.  And she would like us to pay attention and help her out.

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."  -Henry David Thoreau