March 26, 2020 -

A beautiful sunny day today. Lots of signs of Spring. Bird calls everywhere and the crocuses are blooming in front of our house.

Today I also heard spring peepers for the first time this year. Spring peepers are tiny frogs an inch or so long that are named for the male’s mating call. That’s an intriguing thing to be known and named after… They live in wet marshy and woodland areas often next to ponds and hibernate under logs, leaves and such during the winter. They can survive cold weather even if some of their internal body fluids freeze. There weren’t many calling tonight; but in a week or two there will be such a chorus they can be heard more than a mile away. Growing up in Minnesota there was a phrase something like, “When you hear the first spring peepers mark your calendar because six months from today we’ll get the first frost”. Garrison Keillor is spot on: Minnesotans are stoic, hardy folks that generally look at the bright side of things but living in the bitter cold north keeps them so pragmatic they don’t dare mention how good they have it and instead keep from reminding each other that life will soon be difficult.

Ann and I took a walk this afternoon when she had a short break from phone and video conferencing. I never realized until this isolation period how hard Ann works! She’s always been good about leaving the stress at the office and despite now living in her “office” I will say she seems to be doing pretty well handling the current chaos the corona virus is having on her work and our society. Our walk took usthrough one of the farm fields and down to the Muschopauge Pond reservoir. The water was clear and everything was beautiful. One thing we talked about was how blessed we are to live where we do and how we don’t always take the time to appreciate it. Seeing the world news and hearing from others (we have friends in NYC), we have things really easy here. It is hard to imagine the difficulties others may having right now with their health, absence from loved ones, and whatever self-quarantine situation they are in. Of course the reality is that this is only day three of isolation for Ann and I and only the beginning of the pandemic in the US.

I guess that last paragraph shows that I truly am from Minnesota!

A friend shared an article with us today that stated that what many of us are feeling is grief. It included some tips on how to deal with it. I’m planning on writing these updates mostly about Mesa Farm (with occasional musings such as this one), so I won’t be including videos or links to other things; but if I mention anything here that sparks an interest such as this article on grief (or spring peepers) please just reply with an email and I’ll try to share.

We start another day tomorrow. Hope you’re all feeling blessed. We really do live in a beautiful world.

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March 26, 2020

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