…not literally, but figuratively. My backyard has become my obsession and the scene of struggles I could not have imagined before Covid. Like many Americans, we have been stuck at home for more than a year. Much of the past year or so was dominated by political theater, as Congress impeached a president in the midst of a contentious election. After months of this, I discovered that I just felt better when I stopped watching the news altogether. Identity politics seems to conjure its own covalent enemies. Our lives were meanwhile being lived out in mini-struggles, as we fought to gain control of our own home garden and still remain connected to our children and our friends, learning new computer skills. The process drove me to employ words not voiced since puberty.

Life seemed to be unfolding in slow motion. This seemed a good time to sort out some things I have been putting off. We gave up on travel plans and contented ourselves with watching Ric Steves’ travel show reruns on PBS and the Viking videos about tours we would never be able to afford. We reminisced a lot about our walking tours in London and Ireland, fading memories now. We watched every imaginable movie we could find on the streaming services (“The Dig” was the best of the new films, we thought.).

We dieted. Salads for lunch. Only eggs and fresh spinach for breakfast. We took the dog for obedience training (she has since forgotten all she learned). Masked and distancing, we still made it to the local Publix grocery once a week and sat in the car to eat chicken bits at the Chic-Fil-A drive-thru. Garden club meetings conducted outdoors in the little city garden provided our only social stimulation.

We “went to church” by watching Morning Prayer on You Tube read by the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral and attended Prince Phillip’s funeral in the same manner. We are Episcopalians by practice and anglophiles at heart. Every morning the Dean serves up a gem of a commentary on the scriptures, while assorted animals, wild and domestic, circulate around the churchyard. We watched the remake of “All Creatures Great and Small” on our go-to PBS station. We watched every single season and episode of Monk, the OCD-detective. These choices beat the Trump saga, hands down.

After polishing and mailing off several entries to literary competitions during the cold weather, I got down to brass tacks, hoping to accomplish things that were more practical. There was the ever-open Home Depot to inspire endless possibilities -as long as the credit card held out. Those guys made out like bandits during the pandemic as people had little to do but make home repairs and improvements. (Hospitals busy with Covid emergencies had to turn away some of those making home repairs who had self inflicted injuries.) I built a new garden fence where we grow vegetables . By my estimate, fresh spinach is eighty-four times more expensive to grow than to buy in the grocery. Treated lumber prices have soared and I have exhausted my scrap woodpile building birdhouses and planters.

Now seemed a great time to have my long delayed cataract surgery done. First one eye and then the other. Nothing to it. Laser surgery on an an industrial scale. Rows of beds, an army of medical assistants. Dollar signs floating out the windows. I have underwear older than my surgeon. I had forgotten the obvious. When my lenses were replaced with artificial ones (or were they animal transplants? I forget), I found I could only read with one eye and then only with “readers.” This was because another eye problem created years ago when a two-hundred and fifty pound high school football player poked me in the eye with his elbow. It’s like most things. Fix one problem and another crops up. Hopefully, this will all get sorted out. I have only managed to read two books in the past two months.

My lawn mower broke down just as warmer weather arrived and I decided to buy a new, self propelled, battery-powered one. It works great, though it walks faster than I can on my short legs. Emptying the clippings bag on the edge of the woods, I got into poison ivy. Its bad. Really bad. Karen insists I bandage up every red splotch and refrain from scratching in hopes it will not spread. Spread to her, that is. I look like Boris Karloff as The Mummy. People stare. People who ignored Covid distancing advice, now move far away from me in store lines. . Even at the recycling center, where we seem to run into gatherings of the local self-styled militia wearing fatigues, their trucks festooned with MAGA stickers and miscellaneous mottos related to to guns, they avoid me as though I have grown a second head. At Walmart, mothers drag their small children away from me and give me that “Is- it- catching?” look.

Its off to the doctor’s office again. This one is a lovely young woman who blesses me with unearned mercy and loads me up with prescription pills and potions that will hopefully restore my good nature as we set off to watch our youngest grand daughter’s high school graduation in Kentucky. It will be our first long- distance, family visit in over a year. Hopefully my rash covered skin and band-aid adornments will not frighten the teenagers at the graduation party.