For my oldest sister’s sake, who had cancer surgery earlier in the year, I have tried to notice what is written about Covid. Apparently we’re a little bit better off than we were awhile ago. There are now a couple of antiviral treatments that are being prescribed. In the NYTimes, a reporter said she’d been treated with one when she got sick. One antiviral is Paxlovid, by Pfizer, and the other is Lagevrio, made by Merck.
HHS.gov/what-are-oral-antivirals
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My exercise regime consists mostly of Youtube videos, and yard work. Every day I have to jump around to either O-Bla-Di-O-Bla-Da by the CoverTuneGrabBag guys, and a Pharrell video of “Happy.†Then I do some (meager) exercises — and then later I go out to cut down branches of the shrubs.
The shrub assault is no picnic. These things have been left to their own devices for years and are taking more and more of the yard. They hide a couple of the first-floor windows. And all I have are hand tools — a big pruner and various small clippers. My shoulders are getting stronger. I have to ice my arms and neck when I come back inside. I can clip and cut only in short stints, because the pruner is heavy.
The bushes remind me of the science fiction movie Day Of The Triffids. They sneakily get bigger while you’re not looking. Even if there’s a drought and the yard is turning brown, the bushes will continue to grow. Their roots probably go down all the way through the earth and they’re stealing water from Australia.
If I’d only thought about it, I would have made sure these things stayed manageable.
I am not very lucky with my yard; my roses have been entirely devoured, leaf and bloom, by the deer while my next door neighbors’ roses are perfect and untouched. But my roses were too easy to get to, while theirs are guarded by some of the landscaping. I think I will cut them way short and see if they’ll regrow, but I’m going to find some kind of wire cage or at least plastic netting to put over them at night. We’ll see.