Leathernecks

I had some vermin get in and eat my new row of beans after they ate the first row a few weeks ago. Nibbled on the lettuce a bit, but not too bad. A handful of corn stalks got broken off too. I'm down to about 1 or 2 meals of corn, so hopefully it can hold on! I got my fence put around everything yesterday, so hopefully no more critters get in. I'm kind of sad I'll be on vacation for the next week. I'll probably have my cherry tomatoes start to ripen, beans to pick (animals only liked one of my 2 kinds of beans), and a ton of peppers to pick. Going to be a big haul when I get back. My early tomatoes might be ready by then, but I think my brandywines will still need more time. They seem to take forever to ripen.

Early on, a lot of cases were definitely missed, but a month ago there were about 450,000 tests per day with about a 4.5% positive rate. Now we're at a little over 600,000 tests per day with a positive rate over 8%. I would say for the last month or so, things haven't changed too much as far as test availability. Early on numbers could have been massive as a lot of people were definitely missed. I hope to see more articles like the one you posted about populations with antibodies from early cases that weren't tested. The main issue I'm looking to have an answer to moving forward is what antibodies mean for this virus. How long do they last, does the virus mutate fast enough that antibodies soon won't matter for people who were early cases? If either of those turn out to be true, a vaccine could be a real struggle. Fingers crossed antibodies will protect for quite a while.

Being in Illinois, 1000 has been the magic number I've been watching. Under 1000 deaths nationwide and 1000 cases in Illinois. I take staying under those numbers as good signs. Illinois went up almost 50% today from a week ago to over 1300, and unfortunately nationwide deaths starting going up this week and are creeping closer to 1000. In Illinois, we got guidelines from the IHSA about opening sports last weekend, and they already changed the guidelines yesterday to make them more strict. I'm getting more pessimistic about having high school sports this fall.

My only question is who got it. Not names, but it doesn't specify between coaches, staff, or athletes. I'm assuming it was athletes who got it, but I didn't see anything that specified.

By Monday all of their workplaces were being circulated around Twitter. The incident at the rally Monday night of a driver hitting and carrying a couple people wasn't good either. Throw in the video a couple weeks ago about the guy getting arrested for allegedly standing up to racism at the lake (not the talk on the football board, but the video was later that same day), and it has been a rough couple weeks.

I was riding in my dad's truck today, and he had a trowel he just bought on the dash. The brand name..."Corona." I mentioned it to him, and he didn't even notice that was the brand, he just needed one. After a stop, he hit the gas, and the trowel fell, and I caught it...I caught the corona lol. We had a good laugh about that. The virus is obviously nothing to laugh about, but like you said, good to have some things to keep us laughing.

That's been the most disappointing thing for me. As a science major and a science teacher, the "science" that has gone on since this outbreak has started is embarrassing.

You might not have the space, but at least you don't have the weeds! Weeding is currently an every other day activity in my garden. I'm really OCD, so your controlled chaos makes me cringe haha. It does look fantastic though!

It seems like once the first tomato shows up, they start coming in bunches. Hopefully a lot more are coming soon. For being planted May 24th, this seeks like about the right timing for most kinds of tomatoes.

Any luck with the tomatoes? Most of mine are starting to take off, but one of them still doesn't have fruit, and my tomatillo keeps dropping blossoms. I was just reading that high humidity can be a problem as the pollen sticks inside the flower and makes pollinating by wind and insects difficult. We've had super high humidity the last week, so maybe that has been the issue. Might need to start hand pollinating to see if that makes a difference.

Thankfully I think all of my plants recovered. I was able to stand them all back up, and hopefully they're good to go. We got around 3 inches of rain a couple nights ago, and a little more yesterday, so I'm good on watering for at least another day or two. That's awesome you're starting to get tomatoes! I did pick one pepperoncini today. Don't know what to do with it though lol.

I worry that after this year, there's going to be an even bigger teacher shortage. Teachers are basically going to have to teach in person and online at the same time. There is already a bad teacher shortage, and I would guess a lot of people aren't going to be signing up for the conditions teachers will have to deal with from this.

That's what I'm thinking too. There's going to have to be so many rules in place that it is going to be a nightmare. I don't want to do things online again, but it would almost be better than some of the things I've seen proposed.

What is education looking like in people's areas? In Illinois we're planning on opening in August with masks, as much distancing as possible, and other precautions, but I just don't see how we'll be able to do it in person. We struggle to find subs for teachers in the best of times, and what is going to happen when kids and teachers start getting it? What's it looking like for everyone else?

We got hit pretty hard with storms last night. Lost most of my sweet corn, and a lot of my peppers and herbs are laying down. Going to try to stake the peppers up today if it isn't too muddy to get to them.

I think early on they are still pretty picky on having the right conditions, but after they get bigger they can better cope with heat/cold and too much or too little water. If all else fails, sacrifice a tomato plant in front of another one to show it you aren't messing around.

I would give it a few days. It seems like it happens to me every year. I just went through it with my tomatoes thinking I was in trouble. I think the first few blossoms are the tax the state takes out before you can start collecting your tomatoes.

Just today I started noticing a couple tiny tomatoes coming on. It seems like most years the first few days of blossoms drop and don't pollinate, but they're definitely starting to go for me. Some people say to shake the plant or brush against the flower to help pollination, but no idea if that helps or not.

Not a chance it is 80 times higher for that time period. The way testing has finally gotten to, pretty much anybody showing symptoms now can get tested. We're currently at roughly 600 deaths per day. Most of these deaths come from people who got it 1-2 weeks ago when we were having about 22,000 positive cases per day. At the peak, we had about 4 times as many deaths as we currently have, so you could say we might have had 4 times as many positives before those deaths. If there were 2.8 million who were showing symptoms, there would have been hundreds of thousands of deaths over that time period. Just the simple fact that more people who had mild flu-like symptoms went to doctors this year out of fear of having the coronavirus already throws the numbers off. There are a lot of false results on flu tests as well, and other things that have similar symptoms. How many people have food poisoning thinking it is the flu? I have no doubt the early numbers were higher than reported, but not even close to 80 times higher.

So I know I have a good starting plant, I'm going to try to harvest seeds from my veggies this year and use them next year. Never done it before, but seed costs can add up, and some companies seem hit or miss on seed quality.

Pepperoncini pepper going strong.

Just finished picking some cilantro. Love the smell of cilantro. I left some that was already bolting, going to see if I can get some coriander seeds out of it.

Just finished weeding and watering my garden. Some good news, some bad news. Fennel Red cabbage Bolting basil My poor beans!!! Everything

Yesterday, I put my puppy in her crate for a few minutes just so I could go out and check to see if the flower on my tomato had opened yet. I don't think I was her favorite parent at that point (and I'm her only parent!).