Catch our collective breath

© M. Wuerker

Ten days before Donald Trump is out of the White House and the US has a chance to regain a semblance of balance. Given The Donald’s penchant for the unexpected, the outlandish, and for inciting violence, let’s catch our collective breath and focus on something more easily understood: Covid-19.

News blues…

California:
Health authorities reported Saturday a record one-day total of 695 coronavirus deaths as many hospitals strain under unprecedented caseloads.
California’s death toll since the start of the pandemic rose to 29,233, according to the state Department of Public Health’s website. 
Meanwhile, hospitalizations are nearly 22,000, and state models project the number could reach 30,000 by Feb 1.
South Africa:
My Covid-alert app reported, early this morning, more than 21,000 infections over a 24-hour period in South Africa. On the positive side, Irish health officials believe three cases of another new variant found in South Africa had been contained after…

confirming the first cases of the more infectious variant found in South Africa on Friday in people who had travelled to Ireland from South Africa over the Christmas holidays.
[Irish health] officials … said on Saturday they believe three cases of another new variant found in South Africa had been contained. 

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Now This | Trump Supporter Calls C-SPAN in Tears Over President's Lies (2:02 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Despite a 7% fall in fossil fuel burning due to coronavirus lockdowns, heat-trapping carbon dioxide continued to build up in the atmosphere, also setting a new record. The average surface temperature across the planet in 2020 was 1.25C higher than in the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900, dangerously close to the 1.5C target set by the world’s nations to avoid the worst impacts.

Read “Climate crisis: 2020 was joint hottest year ever recorded” >> 

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Photo essay – a reminder of who and what else depends on a health planet 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Last year's potato crop -
before monkeys....

Lifestyle of the potato: While I understand how to prepare potato “eyes” for planting, I’ve never planted potatoes. All potato plants that grow in this KZN garden are volunteers. (Also true of tomatoes, varieties of squash, onions, and strawberries in this garden. I’ve given up on harvesting tomatoes as they suffer from assorted blights, viruses, and bugs soon as the fruit appears.)
This year, monkeys have been particularly destructive, pulling up plants and biting, once, into a fruit before discarding it and picking and biting into another.
Potatoes may appear prosaic and they’re cheap and abundant in grocery stores, but fresh, plump, garden-grown potatoes offer a certain .. je ne sais quoi. 

Alas, this year, the few I harvested were asymmetrical and knobby with a more-dense-than-usual texture, and full of “eyes.” (Eyes develop into more potato plants.) 

 I cooked and ate them anyway.
I intend to grow potatoes in my new garden, along with basil, chard, parsley, onions, cilantro/coriander, and strawberries.
My new neighbors advise that monkeys do not frequent that neighborhood, but warthogs do. Warthogs offer the additional hassle of being diurnal, that is they forage both day and night.
Something to look forward to – at least until the novelty of warthogs in my garden wears off.

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The garden pond’s runaway exotic lilies are blooming. They’re a lovely yellow (indigenous lilies are purple) and, as exotics, have few natural predators. By this time of year, they quickly overrun the pond and must be removed.
The gardener hates entering the pond – “inyoka” – snakes, he claims – so I don waders and gloves to extract lilies. I place piles of lily debris on the banks and the gardener strews them along a path. Theoretically, the layer of dry lilies discourages weeds and creates a walkway in the lower section of the garden.
As for snakes in the pond, in three years I’ve seen one, a Common Brown River snake. Scary, but non-venomous.