Pandemic gardening

Gardens are such a great distraction for kids, so the minute schools shut down I started one.

I am no regular gardener, but have been known to garden occasionally. When we first moved in we bought two raised beds (literally raised, they are like tables - this is so helpful for my bad back). These beds are pretty small but are enough to grow a few things every year. The last two years, we didn't grow anything because we've been doing other things. So we bought a bunch of dirt and filled them back up again and got them ready to go. Now, they are full of things!

A view of our two garden beds from our living room window (taken during the rain). You can see a little bump in our yard way out behind it, which is really what I was really taking a picture of originally - we had water accumulating in a sort of pillow under the grass that was coming from a pipe from one of our gutters! We actually had to go out and "pop" it!!! But that's a story for another day.

This one shows kale in the front (we just picked it), carrots behind that and then a bunch of cucumber.

This one is full of tomatoes. There seems to be a bunch of different kinds. We grew them from seeds that a friend gave us in an envelope labeled "assorted tomatoes" so it will be a surprise!!

These are the assorted seeds we got from a friend. So many different seeds, and so much fun waiting to see what grows!!

 I've never grown so many plants from seeds before, so it was kind of an adventure. I figured out that if you cut up a milk carton, it makes a great place to start some plants. I put 3-4 in each container and then had to pull the plants apart later, so maybe smaller sized containers would be better - but these were free and didn't require a store trip so worked for this year!

Our first go at sprouting seeds totally failed. I didn't get the holes cut in the bottom of the containers very well and the kids over exuberantly watered everything until they all met their sad death. 

We got more seeds, and cut bigger holes, and tried again. Almost everything grew the second time, though it was getting a little later in the season so things like the sugar snap peas never quite had a good season. But many other things, like kale and carrots and cucumbers and tomatoes, are doing just fine. 

Since we grew from seed we didn't really know how much would grow and ended up with a LOT more starters than we had room for in our little gardens. So, I started buying pots to put around the deck. We considered building a whole new bed in the yard but didn't know if we would keep up this kind of volume to make it worthwhile after this year. Besides, the pots around the deck meant we could easily watch the plants grow from our kitchen table, which has been especially fun.

A chili pepper! Almost ready to pick. We grew 5 kinds: Serrano, jalepeno, ghost, and two mysteries from our friend's seeds.

Chives! After our kids eat these, they smell like chives for hours.

sugar snap peas! These are my absolute favorite garden snack. I hardly got any this year because they went in too late, and the few we had were immediately picked and eaten by the kids, which both act like rabbits.

This pot is full of okra, and giant sunflowers. I probably tried to pack in too much to this one pot but I thought I'd try it. 

Basil! Another pick-and-eat favorite of mine and the kids. We also have peppermint growing under the deck, which sprung up on its own, and that is probably the biggest hit of all of them.

I also have about 4 more pots of tomatoes, and a bunch of pots that have just one okra or sunflower each. 

We tried and never succeeded at: marigolds (from seed), and beans and pumpkins (they were damaged by the wind in transit from a neighbor's house). We also had a really hard time with peppers and kale (I think the seeds were just old) - we planted about 30 seeds and got just two to grow of each, and it took about a month. The peppers were a complete surprise - I had given up and planted something else in the starter pots when they suddenly appeared one day. I still don't know what kind - we'll see!

Gardening has been WONDERFUL for the kids. It's a great distraction for a tantrums and bonding time for all of us. Everyone in the family is taking pride in what's growing and pitching in to help. My only complaint is that we don't have nearly enough - everything gets eaten before we even bring it inside!

Pandemic haircuts

We made a big decision. We decided to take Little L for a haircut. COVID cases are still relatively low in our town (we just passed 100 cases in a city of 80,000), but it really looks like things are about to get worse so it was now or never (at least until vaccine). We took him to a place that requires masks and appointments, and at a time when there were no other customers. We were in and out in 15 minutes. 

To go, he had to wear a mask. He's only three, so this was a big uncertainty. But, he did great! He loves haircuts, so was very much willing to wear a mask. Also, I sewed him a super cute Star Wars mask and we gushed about how handsome he was in it, which he loved.

In fact, he wore his mask all the way to the hair cut place (which is only 5 min away).

Little L just loves haircuts (unlike his sister, who was a terror to get haircuts). He happily climbed up on the booster seat and sat like a perfect prince the whole time, no cringing or anything. He didn't even touch his face mask! When he was finished, he high fived the lady and nodded knowingly when she said they didn't have suckers because of the pandemic. He was extremely happy to get a temporary tattoo instead, which he put on immediately when we got home (it was a sudsy shampoo bottle).

His new haircut looks great!

While Little L got his haircut, I talked to the lady cutting his hair. They have had little business since re-opening. Tips are unpredictable because lots of customers are broke. She has no childcare and has had to ask her parents to help out in order to work, which is a big risk to her parents. We commiserated over our hard realities (hers are definitely worse than mine). We commiserated over the uncertain future. I would have hugged her if I could have - but instead, we stayed 6 ft from each other and had to talk through our face masks. It is such a crazy world right now.

But, at least we could get Little L a much needed haircut!

Opening higher ed schools under pandemic concerns

This week, the university where I work and many other higher education schools announced plans to open up schools in the fall despite the ongoing pandemic. 

This seems to be the going plan: 1) bring back students and 2) hope for the best.

Given that the NBA can't even keep their players COVID-free, with all the money they can put into that effort, it seems unlikely the universities will have much luck. But I guess you never know. 

Logistically, it seems like a nightmare. We have maxed out our classrooms and dorms and dining halls. We have narrow hallways and often only one exit and entrance to the classrooms. We really can't keep students away from each other, even if they want to be. And they probably won't want to be. In our college town, there have been constant parties near campus even during the height of the shutdowns. I'm glad I'm not in charge of figuring out any of this.

The faculty are having mixed reactions. Personally, I understand the dilemma and the need to hope for the best. It just seems so unlikely that they'll make it past 2 weeks. But to be honest, the main thing I am worried about is childcare. Opening up the university will accelerate a spike in cases leading to faster school and daycare closures - and parents everywhere are so desperate to even have a little relief in the fall. Me included. With the announcement this week, all my hope for returning kids in the fall - even for a week or two - vanished.

Thankfully, I live in a place where most people seem to understand the situation and are doing everything they can to mitigate it. People wear masks. They social distance (often better than me) and wash hands (also probably better than me). They sew masks and leave them in baskets outside, and then advertise on social media where to come find them. Nobody judges, at least not openly. Because of all that, we've kept cases low. We were even mentioned on the front page of the New York Times last weekend! Maybe we'll continue to keep cases low-ish in the fall too - here's hoping.

Pandemic sourdough

The title of this post should maybe just be "Sourdough" because the story of the sourdough started before the pandemic. 

Sometime last year, I was asked to be the 'scientist' in a panel discussion with an invited author, Sandor Katze, who writes about food fermentation. I had never heard of him and had almost zero knowledge about fermentation. But I agreed, and had a blast (of course). I ended up going to all the events related to his visit, including an AMAZING dinner designed by an artist that uses fermented food as a medium for their work (fermentation and feminism). It was fascinating.

Anyways, that brings me to sourdough. One of the events was a partnership with the public library, which was doing a book club on a book, "Sourdough" at the time. So I read the book. It was kind of blah, but I got really into the idea of making sourdough. And my husband read the much more interesting fermentation book by Sandor Katz and got into making fermented peppers. So we tried each. The peppers worked great (except for a few that failed). The sourdough, not so much.

The first starter we forgot about and it dried out.

The second starter we overwatered and it molded.

The third one died with no explanation. I think it knew about all the others and was protesting on principal.

The fourth one worked, which happened during the pandemic. After about a week and a half, we were sure we weren't going to kill it and we started our sourdough. We followed a recipe with great detailed explanations from Tartan, a bakery in San Franscisco (we bought their book). We let the bread rise outside in the morning, when it was about 80F, and when it got up past 90F in the afternoon we moved it to an uninsulated part of our house that was about 80F (the rest of our house is at 73F with air conditioning, which we've found isn't quite warm enough). It rose really well. The studly hubby did a great job working the dough because he has learned how to work dough from all the pizza he's made over the years. Then we baked it and boy! it was so great. 

Pandemic facemasks and doctors

I've been sewing facemasks like a fiend. It's been a HUGE stress reducer. I'm giving them away as fast as I can sew them, too - everyone needs them now! It's been so fun finding cute fabric and playing with the patterns. I've just started wearing them a lot more now that I am going back to work. Now that I am wearing them, I am finding little ways to improve them and looking forward to rolling out production of FaceMask v2. 

Today, I took my daughter to the doctor for her yearly checkup. We are cancelling everything that is not essential especially those involving kids (because they put their fingers all over everything). But, she needed to go for several reasons so we put her in a face mask and took her. I gave her one of the first face masks I ever made, which I made too small on accident so it fits her well.

This picture is of my daughter and I in our facemasks. She's so cute in a face mask!

The doctor's office was a little different. We sat in our car and called the front desk when we got there. They sent out a nurse when they were ready for us. They took our temperatures before letting us in to the clinic (not that it helps). They had plexiglass in front of the reception area, and they spread the chairs out in the waiting area. All the doctors and nurses had face masks on (the good ones - N95s). They never took them off, not even to talk to us. 

There is new data suggesting face masks, even cloth ones, are a powerful protector against COVID. I'm all in on that idea. One can really express themselves through the type of face mask they wear, and you can also get out and about a bit more, which is really a nice relief after all that time at home. The trouble is, you always want to adjust it or pull it down to talk - my daughter was especially bad about this! And that brings new risk in. I kept having to coach her on proper face mask wearing. And try to remember myself. It's kind of exhausting! Hopefully, with time, we'll all get more used to it.

Pandemic cooking

Since we're home all the time now, we've started cooking a lot (like everyone else). Like, A LOT.

We have only gotten food cooked by someone else ONE TIME in the past 3 months.

We are also cooking lots of new things: home made tortillas, bread, Thai food, salsa, vegan strawberry shortcake and lots of other vegan things (little L is lactose intolerant).

This is our homemade vegan strawberry shortcake with strawberry compote and real homemade whip cream (little L gets coconut whip cream).

This is me eating tacos with homemade tortillas, chorizo and topped with homemade green tomatillo salsa

These are some of our other favorites: vegan banana chocolate chip muffins

This is one of our favorite cookbooks! Everything in it has been a winner.

We're also cooking lots of family favorites: homemade yogurt, ice cream, chicken soup, enchiladas,

Our homemade yogurt - we often top with a strawberry compote or teaspoon of sugar

We're also experimenting with some really interesting stuff like kimchi and fermented peppers, sauerkraut, etc (we started this before the pandemic), sourdough and other kinds of bread, and growing our own veggies (more on this later).

One of our loaves of bread - super delicious!

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Cooking is an easy thing to do while the kids are working on other projects, especially things that can be started and stopped a lot. The kids even help sometimes!

Big L helping little L knead the dough for some bread. The first time I asked little L to knead the dough he thought I said "EAT the dough" and he took a big bite of it! We had to run after him and get him to spit it out! It caused quite the laugh.

Little L LOVES washing dishes, which is a real blessing when you are cooking a lot. He'll wash dishes for an hour sometimes!

Homeschooling, pandemic style

Taking care of kids at home is hard. Taking care of kids while working full time is harder. Taking care of kids when you can't go out or interact with anybody and have to work full time is absolutely ridiculous. But, we have really come a long ways in 2.5 months.

Here are some things we've learned to be helpful.

1) Restrict screen time. If we don't restrict it ends up being ultimately useless as the kids don't really pay serious attention to it. Also, our kids whine constantly so we had to implement a 'go to your room if you whine about it' policy which we now apply to lots of things.

2. Put the kids to bed as early as possible. Little L's daycare teachers are magical nap-inducing fairies. Not so much at home. And he became a chronic cranky bear when daycare ended. We moved the bedtime up by an hour and viola, things got SO MUCH better. Plus, then mom, dad and Big L get an extra hour of time away from the 3.5-yr old tornado.

3. NEVER do housework while the kids are sleeping. I was inspired by this post over at busytoddler.com (a GREAT resource). Alone time is SO PRECIOUS. And kids need to learn to help clean up anyway. I've gotten so good at this and at keeping kids busy that sometimes I can spend 2+ hrs on housework during my shift with the kids. The secret was...

4. Plan ahead for kid activities. On Sundays, I scroll through blogs and order a few supplies. I focus on different types of activities like crafting, education, cooking, house projects, and physical activity. I found great ideas at homeschool blogs like the one above and 123homeschool4me.com. It's best to keep a running list of new ideas and a bin full of old projects too. I'm also learning to keep EVERYTHING like toilet paper rolls and empty tin cans because you never know what might turn into a project!

5. Make the most of your work shift. Separate work into "high focus," "medium focus" and "low/no focus." For the high focus (aka 'deep work'), let the designated kid-care parent handle EVERYTHING (except a true emergency). For medium focus (aka a meeting you only participate in a little), either help out the other parent for a bit or do another medium or low focus task, like order groceries or email. Try to do low focus tasks entirely while on your kid shift (the Studly Hubby is GREAT at this).

We've tried obvious things like instituting quiet time and teaching Big L to watch Little L, but they weren't really all that effective. Maybe those things work for other people. We are kind of flying with whatever works for us, and continually adjusting. But, we do seem to be getting better, in tiny steps. Perhaps others will find this and post some great ideas we can try! And to any of you that do, my best to you - it is a crazy train.