The Pluff Mud Days of Covid Times

Here’s me, keeping up with the latest fashion trend of the day!  

  Still sheltering in, ordering our food online and picking it up in the Walmart parking lot.  Walmart produce leaves a lot to be desired but when you live in a small town, you don’t have other choices.  

  We have made one trip in the last 10 weeks to Aldi 45 minutes away for organic produce.  We felt pretty comfortable with the procedures they have in place so we will probably go back once a month or so.   

  Some days feel like life is settling into a new routine we can be comfortable with, other days I feel like I’m trudging along in cheese grits.  How to look forward to things you have no idea when (or even if) you will be able to do again?  How to be content with nothing to plan and look forward to?  That is where I get into the pluff mud* of the mind.    

[* Pluff mud: that stinky, shiny gumbo mud that appears when the tide recedes from oyster flats.]

“If I wear my mask, can I drive?”

Herbs to flavor our wilty Walmart produce. 🙄

Sign outside a town business.  A comma might clarify the intention, no?


A message from the beach

And something for the ladies ...

Especially nice with your mask, right? 😷 

Week 8, Day 1 - Beaches Reopen

  Pawleys Island south beach was closed beginning last November for hurricane damage and repairs, then for Covid-19, until May.  Six long months.  So happy to have “our” beach open once again.  Boy, have we have missed it!

  No problem keeping a proper social distance at 8 a.m. as we wandered among the tidal pools at the south tip, admiring the sounds and smells, shells and jelly fish, gulls and sandpipers, and exquisite art by Mother Nature.  

     Thanks to beach renourishment and replacement of the dunes, we can now walk four miles, from one end of the island to the other. 

  When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused. 

-Rainer Maria Rilke

  Nothing dims thoughts and fears of the troubles of the world, nothing soothes the soul, 

like a walk on the beach.  

Covid Captivity: Week 7, Day 1

  I don’t know how people in cities and those who can’t leave their homes are keeping their sanity through the pandemic.  I really can’t complain because we have had quiet and scenic and safe places to frequent nearly every day this spring.  Even the weather has cooperated with surprisingly cool, sunny spring days. 

  

  Remember Lulu my folding bike, named after my hiking/biking friend from childhood who died way too young?  

  Lulu has been getting a workout lately.  

  Last weekend we loaded up our bikes for a ride down on the harbor.

One of the marinas in town had some very large fishing boats present, much larger than the ones we usually see docked here.  The blue double-masted one is the biggest I’ve ever seen and would fish well out from the Gulf Stream.  There were some swanky yachts, too, that we don’t normally see.  

  

  We pedaled on to the public boat landing on East Bay, just reopened by the governor after being closed for a couple weeks because of the virus.

  To the right you can see the town and the same fishing boat with the blue masts.  In the foreground are two men from North Carolina who have just paddled their small kayaks 140 miles to Georgetown on the Waccamaw River Trail.  

  I wanted so much to talk to them about their trip, but there was a group of people fishing at the beginning of the ramp the kayaks were on and no way to get by them and maintain the proper distance.  Shortly after I took this picture both kayakers were on their backs, napping in the sun!  

  “The 140-mile Waccamaw River Blue Trail extends the entire length of the river in North and South Carolina. Beginning near Lake Waccamaw,  the river meanders through the Waccamaw River Heritage Preserve and Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge before merging with the Intracoastal Waterway where it passes historic rice fields and ends at Winyah Bay near Georgetown. Its black waters, cypress swamps and tidal marshes are home to many rare species of plants and animals. The river is also steeped in history with Native American settlements, Civil War sites, rice and indigo plantations.”

  

  We would love to do this trip someday!  

  The public boat landing has some pretty landscaping in bloom right now.  I’m not sure what either of these large bushes are.  

  Last summer anti-littering groups got together and built creatures from the sea at landings throughout the county.  They invited children to help clean the litter from the area and fill the sculptures with trash they picked up.  The East Bay landing got a shrimp because so many shrimp boats are based here.  

School-at-Home: Middle grandson Aiden and his dog Nettie 

I hope you are keeping your spirits up, enjoying some new pursuits,

 and staying in touch with friends and family. 

Don’t forget ...

😉

Life in the Time of Covid

   One of my favorite poems by the American poet Langston Hughes starts out, “

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on...”

    That’s how I’ve been feeling these days of the Covid-19 Shelter-In, or whatever it will come to be called in the history books someday.  I’m finding it hard to sit down and write a blog or even read a book.  On the other hand, the freezer has been cleaned and organized, the oven excavated and shined, the windows polished.  I have mended and ironed and washed, weeded and trimmed everything in sight.  It seems it’s my feet and hands that need to be always moving. My brain is on vacation.    

    For excitement, besides Rosie unexpectedly dying we had tornadoes one morning this week, with one touching down just miles from our house.  I’ve never experienced a tornado warning without a basement shelter to retreat to. 

  Apparently, the place to be is the bathroom so you toss in all you can, including pillows to put over your head (see right), and squeeze in with it all.  

    The safest place of all is the bathtub (??) which Bob seems to instinctively know because it’s where you can find her any time there is a thunderstorm.

    Nine people died in this line of three or four tornadoes (they’re still counting) 160 miles long along the coast of South Carolina. The nearest touchdown was only a few miles away.   We are thankful we were spared.

     Until this week we have been able to continue hiking but those days are coming to a close with heat, alligators, and bugs. This week we have stuck to exploring the historic district of our town which is fun, too.  

  Last week a little 4 inch amphibian posed for a picture on a trail through the Santee Delta Preserve.  

     

    

Just a short walk farther on we spotted a 10 foot reptile in the water a few feet off the trail! 

    Nearby, between water on either side of the trail, we were on the newly trampled path of a large alligator crossing from one side to the other.

Standing (very briefly!) on the hiking path, looking to the right 

   And to the left, the alligator trail ...

“Frequent use make the runs appear well trampled.”

  This one appears well trampled, no doubt about it!  We had to cross it to get back to the car, which we did right smart!  So, we will probably wisely be leaving the paths at Santee Delta to the gators until next winter.  

  

   I will leave you with one more photo, sent to me by my daughter with the caption,

“Me: Trying to work.

Mason: LOOK!  HI MOM!  LOOK AT ME!!!”

Goodbye, Sweet Girl

Rosie

      April 7, 2006 - April 6, 2020

The Gift (?) of Time

  It happened so fast.  A couple short weeks ago we hadn’t a clue how much life would change almost overnight. It has felt like the hours in our day were thrown into a hat, vigorously shaken, then dumped out and handed back to us.  Without the bones — the routines dictated by appointments, chores, habits, responsibilities —

 we went adrift a bit, frightened, anxious, twitchy, unable to concentrate.  

  

  We don't get out of our PJs as quickly as we did BC (Before Corona) (unless it’s senior day at the grocery store, 6-7a.m. Tuesdays). 

  I linger over the blogs I read, obsessively stalk the birds in our yard. Saturday night we had a fifteen minute hoot-off between two barred owls outside our bedroom window.  It was awesome!  Did you know owls bark?  

I have more time to read books, more time to enjoy a Facebook book group I’m in and offer more than a “like”.  I have deleted some news sources and added a group on “slow stitching” for inspiration.

  The state parks we frequent have closed with their  hiking trails and beautiful beaches.  I miss my favorite trees! The small beach we still have access to will likely close any day.  

   Our walks now are in our quiet neighborhood and we have a new appreciation for our local sunrises.  This morning on Winyah Bay  ....

  The grandboys are home from school, their parents working from home, and with extra time for family we have discovered Marco Polo, a free and easy app for leaving video messages for each other.  Guess who learned to ride his two-wheeler!  

... and use the mixer to make cookies!

   The worst has not hit us here in our state yet.  Sadly, our governor still has not given the “shelter in place” order so it is expected that we will be one of the states with high illness and death rates.  Mayors and town councils are trying to close down public places now on their own but are being threatened by the state Attorney General with lawsuits for “overstepping their authority”.  

It’s a mess.

What can we do but laugh? 

And my favorite ...

‘Getting Out’ While Sheltering In

 When I headed out for my walk early this morning I could easily pretend it was any ordinary March morning, one before we ever heard of corona virus or Social Distancing.  

The wisteria and azaleas are in bloom, the birds were singing everywhere, and every step I took I gave thanks for still being able to take a walk. 

 My daughter in Munich texted last night that they are now allowed only to go for a solo walk in their own city block, to the grocery store, or ‘apothecary’.  She works from home, lives alone in a small city apartment; so far away from home it’s tough to be so isolated.  

  I want to share a couple links that have brought us pleasure as we stay home. The first one is nature sounds from our beautiful national parks, “ PARKTRACKS will virtually transport you to national parks across the country with sounds captured by the National Park Service.”  The second is for full length concerts from our nation’s wonderful symphony orchestras, also free.  

Nature Sounds

https://articles.bento-live.pbs.org/articles/2020/03/a-night-out-at-the-symphony-from-home/?utm_campaign=&utm_content=1584710235&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_source=facebook

  I also want to recommend the movie we watched last night, Its a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.  Its a moving and uplifting story based on the life of Mister Rogers from the children’s tv show and it’s delightful.  

  I know several of my readers live alone and I want you to know you are not abandoned, you are thought of daily with fondness and caring.  I hope you all find happiness in counting your blessings this Sunday.  

You, my blogging friends, are one of my great blessings.