My parents spoil me rotten when I visit. I wake up to coffee ready and breakfast on the stove. My mom constantly offers snacks and cold drinks, even this week when their refrigerator is on the blink. She's always prepared, though, so while she waits for the repairman coming on July 2, she uses a second refrigerator and freezer in the basement to store food. There's plenty of other food in the basement, so there's no danger of any of us going hungry any time soon! Last night was takeout pizza, tonight Chinese...tomorrow we may actually cook!
After breakfast, we walked around outside to look at her gardens. Some day I need to figure out the secret to how she gets her plants to bloom so profusely and to propagate all over her yard. She's got foxglove that are 5 feet tall, and a blueberry bush over 10 feet tall that's loaded with berries. As we walked around, she pointed out other blueberry bushes that have taken root in new beds. Blackberries sprinkle the tops of stalks and the vegetable garden is full of pots containing kale, herbs, tomatoes and squash that grow through the bottom of their pots to anchor themselves in the soil below. There are roses that she dug up from her parents' house, young trees that she got from her priest, and most every potted plant was wintered over in her basement and brought out to rebloom for another year.
I've brought plenty of clippings home from her yard over the years, only to kill them off within weeks. It's not that I have a black thumb, but I don't have that natural ability to tell when a plant is in dire straits until it is dead in the pot. She's already picked out some clippings for me to take home, so I'm determined to do some research to make sure they survive!!
We had some leftover pizza for lunch, then relaxed and watched a movie in the afternoon while I knitted. It felt so decadent. I can only get away with watching a movie in the afternoon if I'm sick, so it was a treat to put my feet up for a couple of hours and get lost in a movie. Once the movie was over, I had to divert my attention or get caught up flipping through news stations, none of which was good news today. Instead I finished an article for the newspaper, then day dreamed a bit about things I could invent that would make COVID life easier. I've had a couple of great ideas already, like masks with holes for drinking straws, but others beat me to mass production. I thought a drone store surveillance service might be cool so buyers could see products on store shelves as they ordered online. Or maybe disinfectant misting stations like water misters on soccer fields could spray down people who enter a building. I've designed a tons of lawn signs and banners over the past month that are great for getting the word out with no contact, but I wish I could come up with a better alternative for Zoom that doesn't feel so much like the Brady Bunch and makes it easier to talk in normal conversation. And today I thought I could start a cottage industry creating cardboard cutout crowds for your next online event. You could fill concert halls with patrons, restaurants with diners, conferences with crowds of suits, or home movie theaters with other viewers. Maybe people would feel less isolated and alone if they had cardboard friends to keep them company, listen to their presentation or go the extra mile in spin class. It might be the safest way to be in a crowd any time soon.........I think I'm on to something!