She Can Slink Along

Spoke with a gent I know in Brazil this morning.  Like me he should be back in China but is stuck home.  All the Covid-19 challenges the U.S. is facing notwithstanding I paused to consider what I hadn’t realized about Brazil:  their currency has now depreciated about 40% against the US dollar.  All international business is therefore impacted and unless you have a steady stream of dollars to buy Brazilian Real denominated goods with, woefully so.   It’s hard enough to manage one’s life in a continental sized epidemic crisis, amidst shambolic, presidential orchestration, a problem we both share, without the added nightmare of one’s spending power being halved.  Wherever you look there are additional Covid-onion-layers of disruption to consider. 

With this gentleman and then later with another morning call, I suddenly turned my phone’s video on and spun it around to show the person on the other end, the fox.  She was back in the yard this morning, repeatedly.   I’m beginning to understand a bit more of her strategy.  If she comes straight up to our house from down near the trail, she can slink along and sprint up over the ridge, but the squirrels all have a good chance of dashing up the trees, if she does.  But if she comes from the right, and puts herself by the trees, the squirrels are forced to make the much longer dash to edge of the forest.  When it’s a longer chase, she often seems to be able to outrun the poor rodents, as was the case this morning. 

A fine day today.  First time in a while I’ve been able to simply bike in a tee-shirt.  It is late May, for God’s sake.  Lots of people all along the trail, as I headed up towards the bridge over the Wallkill.  Just before there were a number of tall weeds with purple flowers which I didn’t recognize.  My Seek app suggested I was looking at Hesperis Matronalis a.k.a. Dame Rocket.  An invasive species from Eurasia that was introduced in the seventeenth century, long before my Irish ancestors ever arrived.

It’s Tuesday night.  The Mrs. made some sole in garlic, like you might have in Cantonese cooking.  It’s not the way I would have made it and found myself enjoying it and wondering how she was able to get the soft piece of fish to remain whole.  Dishes done its the night of the week when the garbage must be tossed into the back of the car and driven up the driveway to the cans, on the side of the road.  I assume that all these large bags are recyclable.  Is it true, what they say, that since China is no longer accepting recycled waste it all just gets handled now as non-recyclable garbage once it is dumped, wherever it is dumped?

Tuesday, 5/19/20