1. Gardening: relaxing and fun!
The most obvious thing you can do in the garden is, obviously, garden. Ignore all this misguided pressure about suddenly accomplishing a lot of all kinds of stuff because you’re stuck in a miserable, stressful situation and you’re scared so you should be magically turning into The Flash or some shit. Sure, if you feel motivated to throw in some hard-core yard work or intensive vegescaping, more power to you!
One of the things I’m in mourning about is that I can no longer hurl myself into a cathartic and engrossing power session laying a path or pulling out a tree stump or building a raised bed. It is what it is. Right now, though, I’m in the same position as a lot of people I know. I was already dealing with a bunch of stuff when all this hit, I have family members I’m deeply worried about, my kid’s sick so I’m not sleeping, I’m sick, and I’m disabled. So, like, I’m not digging any post holes or replacing the trellis. I did get too restless which led me to become seriously ambitious today and I took out the giant eyesore pyracantha branch that’d turned into a kind of sail threatening to take the fence down, but I’m paying for it pretty hard. So what? I feel accomplished.
What I meant to do today was what I’ll do every time it’s sunny and I’m so inclined: putter. I’ve decided to kind of get into this Australian-spawned bin-outing fun and went out in my Godzilla robe last week with the recycling bin; this week it’s the green waste bin’s turn so there should be something in it so I have an excuse to take it out, not to mention my husband’s gonna want to mow the lawn soon so as much stuff as possible should go out tomorrow before we fill the bin up with that. Before I went briefly nuts and did that pyracantha branch, I wandered
gently around the patio gathering up small drifts of leaves from among the edge plant pots and areas. I ignored the weeds coming up through the paving stones; I can do that another day when I’m up to it. I’m sick today. I dumped a few handfuls of well-aged soil from that bag I forgot about under that chair by the shed for a couple of years into the little edge strip where that baby iris I bought for a buck two years ago has decided to grace us with two blooms this year; it was so good there was even an earthworm in it! I snipped off dead flowers and trimmed the fence-planted sage back – I sure wish I could score a chicken to stuff it in, but I’ll find a use for it.
So: gardening! Relaxing, rewarding, and fun!
2. Take a sedentary activity outside!
Whether it’s browsing on your phone or tablet, my go-to reading books, having a look through the daily paper, sketching, it doesn’t matter – take it outside. Sunlight has proven physical benefits as well as significant psychic rewards, likewise the feeling
of fresh air moving against skin, hair, eyeballs. From my garden I can hear a lot of birdsong, neighbors puttering around in their own ways, distant dogs barking. Crows. That asshole who revs his motorcycle. Angelic singing tots. Those teenagers who not only blast horrific modern pop but stop it randomly in the middle of songs to start another one. Crickets. Whoever thinks that vuvuzela is still funny. Some of you may opt for headphones.
3. “Work out”
Who doesn't feel refreshed by overdoing it pushing your body to some hyped-up artificial max? FEEL the burn!
Seriously, though, do keep moving. I know all too well from a series of personal experiences how far south your body can go if you curl up and die even for a little while. No matter how much you want to, don’t stop moving. I’m not saying start some kind of program – unless that’s what you’re into. I’m not saying set up some kind of goal-oriented schedule – unless that’s what you like or need or both. Just keep moving.
Until a couple of weeks ago I could still walk around the block and stuff, but now one of us has corona and I probably do, so garden it is. It’s, I dunno, 12 or 15 paces long and three wide, but I don’t pace; pacing’s great if that what your body needs but mine’s 2/3 broken in one way or another and I’m carrying too much around besides, so what I do is take my camera and wander around mixing it up, crouching down here, waiting frozen but keyed up like a cat at a gopher hole if I think a bird or a bee I have in focus might Do Something there, standing on tiptoe to see how the top of the neighbor’s laburnum is looking. Skygazing. Sitting briefly, doing some stretches, just listening, sparring with my cat.
Just keep moving.
4. Attract small vagrant wildlife
Even the smallest garden attracts wildlife. You may not think of it as wildlife, but even when it’s small and/or by some accounts grody, it’s still wildlife. I’m lucky enough that the occasional toad wanders in, butterflies teem here in the summer, and we get hedgehogs but only the neighbors have seen them.
The thing is, though,I’ve dedicated eight years to making my garden a bee and bird oasis, and it’s starting to pay off. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t; here are some picture I took which could have been taken in the meanest of totally neglected urban postage-stamp “gardens”, if it has a bit of soil, some rotting wood and/or leaf matter, maybe an overturned pot for things to hide in or under, and sometimes a flower or two.
5. Lurk
“’Please, please, what can we do we were nagging now
so you will show yourself to us in some other manifestation?’
‘You should lurk. You should L, U, R, K. Lurk.’
Now I never really figured out how to lurk in my own place,
even though it was only a rented place,
but I did find myself looking over my shoulder a lot.
And every sound that drifted in seemed
to be a version of this phantom voice whispering in a code that I could never crack."
-- Laurie Anderson, The Ouija Board
Whatever you do, do you.
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