Forward into May

I love May Day; we do not celebrate it in the way that it is celebrated in the British Isles here in Canada. But I can remember my grandfather's excitement (and my fathers) talking about May Day Celebrations in the village of Upper Clatford when he was a child (for my father that would have been Eastleigh near Southampton). May Day for me was the start of summer and that was perhaps truer in southwestern Ontario than here in Eastern Ontario; it was more likely to be a very warm sunny day. But this May Day lacked some of that excitement; our world was still pretty much in lockdown but there was a breath of openness coming. Today the garden centres open for curbside pickup. That is a start and perhaps we will take a drive to see what that looks like for Laportes (our favourite Garden Centre). We are definitely moving forward with small steps and that is the best way for sure.

We can get some bedding plants and keep them warm until the ground has warmed up enough to receive them. We have forked the areas where we are going to put pepper and tomato plants. That ground is free running and full of juicy earthworms waiting to do their task. Forking the ground aerates it for them as well.

There are now 3,507,265 (increase of 65,490 over yesterday) cases of COVID-19 worldwide, there have been 247,491 deaths (increase of 3,569 over yesterday) and 1,127,887 have recovered (increase of 30,029 over yesterday). In Canada there have been 59,474 cases (increase of 2,760 over yesterday), 3,682 deaths (increase of 116 over yesterday) and 24,908 recovered (increase of 1,107 over yesterday). But 3.5 million cases is only 0.05% of the world's population; hopefully the unreported is not a large number and we are beginning to peak worldwide but I am not so sure that is the case. the numbers are still increasing rapidly.