It’s strange realizing July is next week. The passage of time since mid-March felt simultaneously like a year and no time at all.
Luckily, at Gillespie Group, business remained mostly as usual, just from home. Outside of working, the days in the beginning of the stay at home order blended together. Work, ride my stationary bike, eat, watch tv and read. The days resembled that of what we see when we meet Desmon Hume in his hatch on Lost (with the exception of the weird injections).
After a certain point, I decided I needed a new hobby — something constructive that passed the time but yielded some reward. First, I decided to clean up my patio, get new furniture and make it more inviting. Then, I decided to start a vegetable garden.
In regards to my tomato plants, I definitely wish I had this idea in March instead of the end of April and May. Tomatoes take time, but luckily I do have a lot of that. I purchased a raised garden bed, filled it with dirt and got started. Tomatoes are tricky in that you have to start them inside from seeds. After about six to eight weeks, they can go outside. I planted my tomato seeds in little egg carton-like containers in early May, and just moved them outside into a few planters around my raised bed. In the bed, I planted zucchini and yellow squash seeds. I can’t tell you what I thought these would look like when they got big, but these plants are huge. So far, one zucchini grew large enough to cut off and eat, but I have a lot more squash getting bigger every day.
On a trip to Lowe’s two weeks ago, I found a bell pepper plant and a basil plant. I wanted to grow these both from seeds when I started with the tomatoes and squash, but couldn’t find any (it was hard to come by the tomato seeds; everyone must be growing their own as well). However, the hard work for the basil and bell peppers was mostly already done. Two bell peppers began growing recently.
Seeing the vegetables grow and get bigger has been extremely satisfying in knowing I grew them myself, and I know exactly where they came from. I’m also excited to share my harvest as I grow more.
Outside of putting my green thumb to use, I started watching The Sopranos for the first time. I expected it to be good, and it is, but I didn’t expect it to be funny, and it makes me laugh more than I expected.
In addition to my position with Gillespie Group, I work part time at a restaurant that I have worked at since college. It’s nice to get out of the house, see my friends and see some of our regular customers. It’s taking some getting used to with the new restrictions in place, but the sense of normalcy makes a huge difference for me mentally.
I expect my summer will play out the way the last few months have, marked by a few trips to the beach or tubing on the Brandywine. I mainly miss going to the movies.
Wear a mask in public, and stay well!
