We see that there have been over 500,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S., but the actual rate of increase seems to be slowing down a bit. Hopefully within a few months there will be a real turn around now that President Biden is on the job. Over here, they just got the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine delivered last week, and on Monday the residents of the nursing home here in Legana, Tasmania, got their shots. The rest of this week they have been doing more in aged care, border control and quarantine workers, staff in aged care, medical professionals, etc. From what they have seen in the UK and Israel, you seem to have pretty good protection even after the first dose, so no need to panic. Eva and I would be in the third group to be vaccinated, which should be around the end of March and will most likely be the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab which is supposedly being produced here at the rate of about a million doses a week. We will both definitely get the shot when it’s our turn, we need to be protected even if some idiots still want to spread it around and risk themselves and everyone else. Australia is still at 909 deaths overall, and it’s now 76 days since any cases at all here in Tasmania.
The lock down they had over in Victoria finished after 5 days, and all the borders are open again. Unfortunately one of our neighbours from Mornington who was supposed to come over on the ferry got caught up in it and had to cancel her trip. She was due to spend a couple of days with us but now will probably wait till 2022 to come over. My brother and his wife, her sister and brother in law, are still flying over on March 6 to Launceston. We should see them on Sunday the 7th and then plan to have dinner with them somewhere on Monday. They are spending a couple of nights in Launceston and then driving over to the east coast, then eventually down to Hobart. They will see my brother there before flying back to Victoria on the 16th. We haven’t decided if we will go down there as well or not. We actually haven’t been down there since we picked up the cats from the breeder last January so maybe we need to start getting out and about a bit more. I think we have both been quite happy to just putter around here doing our own thing, even though Tasmania has been well insulated from what has been happening around the world the past 12 months.
We are still getting way too much produce from the garden, we planted too much, and even with feeding a lot of it to the wallabies, pickling and freezing some, it’s still a problem. I am working on reducing the size of the garden area by half, and next time we will just plant one or maybe two each of things like capsicum peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Also smaller plantings of things like radish, carrot, lettuce, spinach, etc. My problem is that I haven’t taken the time to thin things out, pinch off the tomato and cucumber, etc. basically because it has been too much work. It’s just that we have never had a garden that has grown so well, and we hate wasting stuff. With a smaller garden just for the two of us, and fewer plants to tend to, it may work this time. John has promised to come up and take most of our raspberry canes in July or August so that will be another problem solved. I may use some of the extra tin sheets surrounding the garden to make a chicken shed, and with the garden small enough I may even be able to have a frame with a shade/net cover to stop the searing sun/frost and provide more shelter from the wind. Eventually we would like a small glass house just out on the patio area so we could have tomatoes and lettuce, etc. even in the winter, and maybe some of those raised beds made out of sheet metal. We could get rid of the garden completely then.
All the trees I planted out so far are doing well, some even have some new growth. I’m still hand watering them twice a week since it has been so dry, but it’s not that hard seeing as I have 3 water faucets out in the back paddock hooked up to tank water. There is still some water in the tank and we may get some more rain soon to top it up, otherwise I can just switch the line over to town water for a while. I bought 3 more shrubs last week and plan to put them out somewhere between us and the neighbour, and then eventually I want to get a bunch of native tube stock which is a lot less expensive and put more stuff out in the autumn and winter to give it a chance without having to water. I am using some of my chipped up branches to mulch around the flower bed so I don’t have to weed so much. The last of the rose bushes I moved there for Eva have finally perked up and are getting new shoots, it’s true that they are hard to kill. I still have more work to do in that area, it seems like there is always something. I’m still focussed on the long term goal of making less work for myself, less mowing, fewer vegetables, and flower beds that look after themselves. I think we have the time.
