Five Days Into Covid

The crows are having a party or an argument in the trees around the farm.  I can’t see them, but I can hear them.  They quiet down, then are back at it again.

I’m sitting on the back porch, Flo curled up on the wicker chair behind me, Minnie sunning herself on the warm slate.  A chorus of crickets is accented with the buzz of all kinds of insects that circle the garden.  A black wasp with iridescent wings lands on the edge of the birdbath to take a drink.

First, one humming bird hovers over the nasturtium in Jon’s garden then another joins the first and they dance around each other before flying off together.

I tested positive for covid yesterday.

It feels like the flu. I can’t remember the last time I had a sore throat.  My body ached so much even my skin hurt, I had chills but thankfully no fever.  All I wanted to do was sleep.

I found that Ibuprophin helps with the aches and five days after the first symptoms, I’m still coughing, but my throat doesn’t hurt as much. This morning I woke up feeling so good, after mucking out the barn I cleaned up some of the donkey manure in the piles in the barnyard too.

I’ve been spreading the manure in the pastures all summer, but now it goes back on the manure pile.  Jon and I will need it for our gardens along with some friends who are asking for some.

When I’m done, a not-so-small rabbit comes out to watch Fate run around the sheep.

At the same time,  Lulu tries to pull an apple from the tree.  She stretches her neck, tilting her head and extending her lips, but still, she can’t reach it.  So she looks to me, then back at the apple.  The same way Fate looks back and forth between me and the drawer where we keep dog treats in the kitchen.

I wave for Fate to make another circle around the sheep and pull the apple from the tree for Lulu.  While I’m looking up, I see the heron, her wings slowly folding and unfolding as she moves across the sky above us.   I reach up to pick another for Fanny.

It’s hard for me to remember how scary the idea of getting covid was two years ago. But when I think of making that first entry on my Corona Kimono, it all comes back to me. The fear, mostly around not knowing what would happen.  I tend to get apocalyptic, imagining the worst.

But here I am five days into having Covid and I’m mucking out the barn, taking care of the animals, and now Jon who is as sick as I was three days ago.

If my iPhone screen not really being broken is a little miracle, that I’m not even worried about having covid myself or about Jon having it,  is a big one.

Maybe we don’t think of vaccines as miracles because they’re so commonplace. But then if they’re so commonplace, why do so many people not believe in them?

Most of the crows are gone now, except for two calling to each other from a distance. Jon is in the house resting, Bud on his lap, Zinnia at his feet.  He barely slept last night he was so congested.

The hummingbird is back.

First to the zinnias in the garden then to the potted petunias hanging on the back porch.  It spends a long time going to each flower and I think I should take a picture of it, but  I don’t want to stop watching.  I don’t want to break the continuum of seeing it dip its long beak into each flower, the blur of wings, and the vibration they create that I feel in my chest more than I hear.

As the hummingbird drifts away, two crows quietly fly over the big old white birch.

It’s time to go in and check on Jon.