Autumn

 

Yesterday I grabbed a photo of the mountain ash trees across the street, laden with berries.

When we first moved to this house, the trees were small.  The area had only been 'developed' for a few years and the small trees the city had planted in front of each house were young.

Our lot had a number of coniferous trees in the back yard, all of which are now gone.  A single large pine tree isn't very stable and over the years many in the neighbourhood had fallen over, taking fences, and porches with them.  So we cut ours down.  Doug planted some plum trees in the back yard and has been harvesting plums from them - until this year.  The climate has  changed and we've noticed those changes.  None of them have been for the better.

So these trees across the street, which would in years past be filled with birds feasting on this bounty?  No birds.  We used to have song birds and lately?  None.

We were lucky this year because we didn't have a lot of forest fire smoke  - until this week when we kept getting urgent notices about the really bad air quality.  We have a/c and a filter and haven't noticed much of a problem (except my sinus drainage ramped up, so...)

We are heading into winter.  But winters aren't the same, either.  Too warm.  Freezing rain instead of light fluffy snow.  Driving conditions become treacherous more than ever.  Instead of roads cleared of ice/snow because the temps are cold enough to keep them that way, not this freeze/thaw nonsense of the past few years.

And covid continues.  

I'm not looking forward to the upcoming trip because we'll have to be so careful.  We'll bring our air filter, eat take out, not visit people we had been planning to visit.  Because you just don't know when you'll encounter someone who may not know they are positive for covid and oops!  Immune compromised system can't handle the virus and if that happens to me, it will in all likelihood NOT be mild, in spite of vaccinations.  

Just this week there was a positive person at the guild meeting - because she didn't know she was positive.  Fortunately everyone was wearing a mask, or we could have a dozen guild members potentially sick with covid.

So many people have just given up doing any kind of preventative measures.  They think it's inevitable and everyone should just get it and get it over with.  Problem with that, is that you can catch covid multiple times - just like you can can a cold - and the more times you catch covid, the risk of Long Covid rises.

The Black Death was a mass extinction event.  Covid is going to prove to be a mass disabling event.  Someone gets covid once, were miserable for a few days, but seemingly recover.  What they don't realize is that covid may have left 'easter eggs' in their body which will blow up in the future.  Because covid is not a respiratory illness.  It gets into the blood and can go anywhere (and everywhere) in your body, cause micro clots, which means the risk of stroke rises, inflammation in organs including heart AND BRAIN.  For men it can mean penile disfunction.  

So no, I'm not about to voluntarily get it and get on with my life.  I will continue to avoid covid LIKE THE PLAGUE IT IS.

Once this trip is done, I will be mostly staying home and avoiding people because as winter arrives, more people will be gathering indoors and if someone doesn't know they are positive, any indoor gathering can become a covid event.

So I'm glad I insisted at the guild meeting that we must ALL wear masks.  Or it could be a dozen people sick, not just the one who was positive and didn't yet know it.

We are living in 'interesting' times, and no idea when it will get better.  But I do know one thing - living with covid does not mean ignoring it.