The Air We Breathe Will Kill Us All
As Motorhead put it in their classic, Suicide, "The air we breathe will kill us all, and no-one left to give a damn." It's a favorite tune, but I thought it was in the future a bit yet. Not so.
It's May 13, and already Canadian wildfires have swathed Minnesota in smoke. Today is day 2 of a "red" air quality alert, which, I'm informed, looks like this:
Red air quality: Unhealthy for everyone
Sights and smells: In areas where air quality is in the red AQI category due to wildfires, the sky may look smoky. The air will look hazy, and you won’t be able to see long distances. You may smell smoke.
Health effects: This air is unhealthy for everyone. Anyone may begin to experience symptoms such as irritated eyes, nose, and throat, coughing, chest tightness, or shortness of breath. Sensitive or more exposed individuals may experience more serious health effects, including worsening of existing heart or lung disease and respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, possibly leading to an asthma attack, heart attack, or stroke.
Terrific. I had to cancel a five mile run and cross-train inside instead, as the air quality and allergies have left me coughing with a sore throat and itchy eyes. Basically all of the symptoms above.
Another thing that I've noticed is that the days are marked by howling winds nearly all the time.
This never happened when I was younger. Sure, you'd have windy days. But it wasn't so constant. Wildfire smoke? I absolutely cannot remember that happening even once, up until 2021.
This is a particular shame as the garden is nearly fully planted with last weekend's exertions. Marigold seeds are in the ground, raspberries have been transplanted, cherry tomato seedlings are planted with the carrots that went in the ground last week, sunflowers and squash seeds are in, the arugula I planted in March is ready to go in salads, new rows of spinach and lettuce have joined the kale in the salad bed. The snow-peas are finding the climbing infrastructure. Cheater peppers & Early Girl tomatoes are planted out.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Early Girl seedlings have not panned out. The same goes for the Hungarian pepper seeds I planted in the greenhouse. My working theory for their failure is that I planted them in my guitar room on the northeast side of the house where they got very little natural light. The dearth of sun made them weak. That's the theory, anyway.
The stairway work continues. The grass and bee lawn are starting to give the front yard a haze of green that has two weeks to mature enough to live without watering. I have a permit from the city to water the seedlings every day until 5/21.
On the positive side, the city instituted its watering rules immediately for the summer. Two days a week, Thursday and Sunday for us. Vegetable gardens are exempt, and we purchased a third rain barrel that we need to set up.
I've made steady progress on the bespoke stairway from the shed to the garage, step by step, box of gravel by box of gravel.
It seems like there is too much to do, and too little time to do it in.
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