Wonderful stories all. I had never heard of the May basket custom, and now I'm feeling a little bit sad that I never knew of it, nor did it with my DD.
I empathize with those angst-ing over the shutdown. I haven't been off the property since the lockdown, in fact, my car battery died because I wasn't out driving. (DH got it up and running for one day, then it died again, so he replaced the battery, with an admonition to me to drive the car. Uh, where? I'm not going anywhere!)
I
used to feel safe in my own garden, but now my garden helper is back Fri/Sat (an absolute necessity there), and next week, with the latest change to the County restrictions (a slight letup for outdoor businesses including landscapers) he'll be digging out/de-rooting my kitchen garden raised beds for me. So right now I don't feel safe when he's here (even though he is wearing a mask), and I'll probably be lurking indoors most of next week.
(Maybe we can work out a deal... YOU stay in the side yard (where the kitchen garden is) and go in/out from that gate, and I'LL stay in the rest of the garden (where the ornamentals need work). Of course, I'll have to come out after he is gone for the day, or before he arrives, to harvest any salad fixings or do other necessary work (like watering pots and tieing up tomato vines) out there.)
Speaking of the kitchen garden, the seeds that I finally got around to planting have started sprouting... so far cucumber, basil, lettuce seedlings are up. I also had very good luck on another forum (non-gardening, but a gardening sub-forum thereof) asking for recommendations for an open-pollinated sweet pepper similar to 'Gypsy' hybrid pepper, which is my number one, must-have, all around useful/favorite pepper. I actually got a response - there is a seed company called Adaptive Seeds which has been dehybridizing 'Gypsy' for 6 generations - so I bought some of those seeds ('Gypsy Queens').
https://www.adaptiveseeds.com/... Hopefully I will now no longer be at the mercy of the hybridizers and will be able to propagate this seed on my own. (Fwiw I have already started 'Gypsy' peppers, late, I know, so I won't trial these until next year.)
