May 2020 – Flowers to be Planted, Spring is Here, Life Goes On

May 2020 was a far less freaky month for me than April was – I guess I “adapted” to the pace of quarantine. Disinfecting my entire day job became thoughtless habit, avoiding people at the store became second nature (not that it wasn’t already for this introvert…) and emotionally freaking out about the craziness became impossible to keep up. Saying we “got used” to living in a world in the midst of a global pandemic sounds insane but bills still needed to be paid. Gardens still needed to be planted. Life still deserved to be lived. Life does always, somehow, keep going on.

Eventually my brain shifted from, “OMG what’s going to happen tomorrow?!??!??!?” to, “… I’m going to get another coat of poly done on that bathroom floor this week …”

Knowing we’re doing all we can eventually just had to be enough *I say as I wash my hands for the 30th time today…*

May 2020 shifted for Lodi and I to spring and plans and future ideas and quiet nights enjoying doing a little bit of nothing together. (Which I think is the very best way to end an evening and to call it “doing nothing” seems just absurd.)

May brought some really lovely spring weather following an also lovely April. I had thought it would mean planting the gardens earlier but then it snowed!

My Mom finished her chemotherapy in late April with the appointments made in mid May 2020 for testing. She rented a cute little house down there for the whole of it and she and I went down together to get it set up and for her first two days of testing and appointments.

I was REALLY relieved I was able to go with my Mom at all. They still allowed one visitor per person, they took our temps, gave us masks and sent us on in.

The VRBO house she rented was just such a good idea on her part!

It was half the cost of a hotel room and, despite the reason we were there, we did some sun bathing and enjoyed the private backyard. (Following that she’s staying down there for five weeks of radiation and only returning on the weekends.)

Mom and I have a love for flowers, plants and green houses.

Every year its our spring tradition to buy annual flowers to fill up all of our planters. One weekend we were able to scratch out a bit of time to plant Mom’s annual flower bed and Lodi and I filled up our deck planters and pots too.

(I couldn’t help but snap some pictures of her incredible Bleeding Hearts for this blog post – they come back every year and every year they are just stunning!)

Its amazing what flowers and sunshine will do to a person’s emotional well being!

My next post will go into a lot more detail about all of our gardens and plantings as this was just the tip of the ice berg lol. We still have to plant our vegetable garden, new asparagus bed and clean out the big L shaped flower garden. Not to mention we need to add more mulch along the house and a few other things too.

I’m sure I’ll be puttering away at all of that throughout June!

The hummingbirds returned like they do every year and I think I finally managed to get the feeders out right when they got here!

A black bear in the neighborhood took out everyone’s suet and bird feeders so our poor birds and little critters just had to suffer without for a few days before we dared put out (what was left of) our feeders again.

Pictures sent over from a neighbor showed a very content bear in my Mom’s yard, eating sunflower seeds, scratching, yawning, napping, rolling and just over all having a nice time.

Last year my mom had a black bear into her bird feeders just about every night for a few weeks. (It wouldn’t surprise me at all if its the same bear.) She kind of enjoyed watching his happy rolliness out front for hours. But, one night, he decided to push it a little far and go up on her deck.

My little mom stuck her head out the door and scolded him, “Not on the deck!” He never tried to go up on her deck again (as far as she knew anyway…)

As usual, after gorging, he’ll probably leave the area until next spring.

What really surprised me is that he didn’t even bother with our hummingbird feeders … maybe sweets just aren’t what he’s looking for right now. When a bear wakes up hungry I guess its not surprising he headed for the suet to get as much fat as he can.

Lodi and I have gone through growing pains in our own ways during a national health crisis, moving in together and a whole butt load of everything else. I think we made it lol we haven’t killed each other!

As far as MN goes May 2020 will be the end of most of the forced shut down on a lot of our businesses. A lot of small businesses were allowed to open on May 18th and then June 1st will be restaurants, hair dressers and bars. (Though places like movie theaters, big events/crowded spaces etc. will still be closed.)

Of course, the businesses that will be opening are with major restrictions. We all know that if we ever do see “normal” again than it is a VERY long way away. Every single event I know of that goes on around here has already been canceled for 2020.

I will admit that I’m just a TINY bit relieved to know a quieter summer is coming for us. Living in a place with such severe winters pretty much guarantees running ourselves ragged every summer. (I remember looking at my calendar a couple of years ago and seeing every single weekend for over thirteen weeks straight, packed to the max, and thinking, “I need to learn to say NO!”)

With what’s been going on in the world (not just May 2020 but over the last few months) and with everything that’s going on with my mom and the HUGE changes in my own life… I’m already really tired.

To have a “forced” quieter summer for Lodi and I – I don’t think is such a bad thing, In fact, I’m rather looking forward to it.

Lodi decided to light up the chimenea one night and OMG my view looked like flames were shooting out of the barn, CRAZY!