Week 7: New phase of stay at home. And spring!

This week had a lot of trademarks of a regular late April in the Great Lakes region: lots of rain and cool days toward the beginning of the week, warm and sunny days following, plant growth that seemed almost watchable, days of staying in completely and days of being able to go out for walks.

But since it’s not a regular late April, I’d add in that the COVID-19 stay at home order here and across the world of our blog readers has been changing and moving to a new season of sorts too. As of May 1, Illinois opened up golf courses, garden centers and some state parks, all with distancing restrictions and a mask mandate when inside a public place like a store and unable to stay 6 feet apart.  In Ireland, all can travel up to 5km from their homes as of Tuesday, up from 2km, and the over 70s can go out for walks! And in Australia, having really reduced infections, schools are starting to reopen and beaches are open for swimming for exercise (seriously jealous of that one!) Here in Chicago, we’re in a strange situation of having no end in sight of a return to normal life, yet even our stricter states never did have as strict travel restrictions or the stay inside restrictions of other countries. So it kinda feels like we were never as restricted, yet we will also not come out of this for a while, and since we still haven’t hit the peak of cases expected in Illinois, there’s still cause for concern about even getting through this round.

Today, John and I stopped at the bakery in Logan Square where they had new signage up referencing the mask rule. Only one of us goes in, and they have a lot of distancing measures in place.

Also showing the lovely flowers now available since garden centers are now open again!

Our local Adams garden center has been closed for almost 2 months, but during the week they got a lot of stock in.

This morning, our friend Chris and his son Turner stopped by to say hi from the sidewalk and report that the line for Adams went around the block. Only 12 customers can go in at a time, and there is a lot of demand for flowers and plants. I was in the basement feeding the piggies at the time, so I brought the piggies to the window so Turner could watch them eat their brekkie. Here’s Roux, torn between eating his celery with gusto and having a sniff at the outdoors!

The flowering pear trees are in bloom now – they bloom so fully and reliably in spring, and the trees are such a nice shape. I’ve thought about a flowering pear as a possible successor to our American Elm when/if it goes. They’re lovely trees but don’t have the canopy and shade of our elm.

Creature report! Nyx had a very intense play / destroy time with the spider fern one morning this week. When I walked through the living room on my way to work (upstairs) he was in pounce position on the floor, with a branch from the fern and needles everywhere, looking crazed / guilty / not even sure what he’d done.

There’s a goose family in Humboldt Park that is just delightful. They hang out by the lagoon, and we even saw them all swim across it together once. Like plants after all our spring rain, these goslings seem to be bigger every day. They’re so adorable though, and nearly glowing with some very bright yellow down.

On Saturday, John and I masked up and took a bike ride on a new bike trail that has been built along the Chicago River, starting behind Lane Tech. When you already wear a helmet and sunglasses, adding a mask really completes the look!

This converging of the North Branch of the Chicago River and the north channel (?) has some rapids! Did not know that was a thing along the highly managed river system that is the Chicago River!

We saw a guy catch and release a pretty big fish!

This week was the last week of class for Miles and Ashton. Miles also had his research paper for his History of Rome class due on Friday, so we took to calling Friday “The Last Day of Rome.” Not really planned but we also ordered pizza that night from one of our favorite places, Coal Fire Pizza on Grand avenue. And a Caesar salad. And to tie it all together, Miles’s paper was about the importance of the grain supply in Rome. Some things have stayed remarkably the same – 2050 years later and a good grain supply is still very important! Here’s Miles in his last class on Thursday and John, Miles and Ashton ready to dig into some pizza after the paper was handed in on Friday. Next week will involve more studying, exams and papers, then the semester will be finished!

The moss on the siding on the garage to the south of us has been bothering me for years. No more! Today I washed it all off. Turns out all it needed was some water and a scrubber. First I tested a corner to see if it could really be done this easily, then proceeded with the whole wall.

Stay tuned for some cool plants to hang from the beams soon! This area doesn’t really get direct sunlight so I might try some ferns.

Today, we got up early and took a quick trip to the Indiana Dunes to take a walk. we were the last car in to the very small parking lot at Cowles Bog – there’s only room for about 15 cars. We had a really lovely walk though, and there weren’t many there at all. It was a great chance to continue our bird watching hobby! Although we really couldn’t identify them, we did see some very small yellow birds that may have been finches.

The bog area was full of some very interesting water plants, including these curled up ferns.

Creature report part 2! This tree looks like it was gnawed at by a beaver, but another person nearby said she thought it was a muskrat.

Then, on the other side of the trail, these structures that we also thought were beaver, but Ashton did a bit of googling later and also thinks they were built by muskrats.

Selfie looking toward lake

And toward the dunes

There’s a great view from the top of the dune by the beach – with a tiny little Chicago way in the distance across the lake!

We wore masks on the trail when passing people, and I guess mine was still on! It looks like I’m concerned about air pollution from the power plant at this end of the beach (and maybe we should be!)

The trees were blooming very prettily along the trail.

Food report! Ashton made a really photo-worthy potato breakfast scramble today, ringed in grapefruit segments. Yum!

We finished off the weekend with an impromptu and distanced backyard visit from our friend Cary, and then a takeout family dinner from Next: chicken enchiladas, corn salad, queso fundido with tortilla chips and tres leche cake. Absolutely delicious!

Wishing you all a delicious week ahead 🙂