Last week I planted tomatoes. I did the expedient thing and just went to Lowe’s and picked up some starts: the reliable Early Girl, the yellow Golden Jubilee, and another hybrid whose name I an forgetting but it gets really big in around 70 days. Around here one should not plant outside until around mid-May, but I had acquired some heat sink-type things to surround the cold-adverse plants.

The picture shows the tomato surrounded by a plastic thing which is basically filled with water. Theoretically, one can plant even at 32F if it is sunny enough I imagine. Last year a couple fellow gardeners used them, and I was amazed at the difference they made.

Otherwise, Amanda got sick Monday night (fever, chills, etc.). It did not seem like it would last that long, but she had to skip work on Wednesday morning. Thursday, she did go in, and then someone was able to cover Friday afternoon for her. As it turned out, she lost her voice Thursday evening, and primary care is not really going to happen without her being able to talk. I ended up picking her up a little bit after dropping her off at work on Friday.

I got sick on Wednesday, but did not feel really bad until Thursday. I had more of the sore throat and coughing, but later morphed into the fever and chills. Amanda got the coughing later. The illness was old in that it seemed to get better in both of us, but then it would come back. And now, over a week later, both of us are still sick, although again it seems we are getting better. Maybe I should be taking my echinacea.

Lonan Kai seemed to avoid the bug, but today he was very grumpy when picked up from school, and he had a very noticeable temperature. He got better quickly over the evening after a dose of medicinals.

The illnesses sapped our energy for the weekend. We did venture off to a bigger playground in the Central District on Saturday, and Lonan Kai demonstrated his walking abilities to us. I noted that new modern playground equipment is quite different than what existed when I grew up. That is, a lot nicer. The new stuff also seemed quite more dangerous than I would have expected from our sue-happy society; the bigger pieces seemed to invite kids to do foolish things when they are very high up off the ground.

Sunday we had our P-Patch year kickoff meeting. Amanda and I did not do much gardening work. Lonan Kai ran around and ate dirt. We cleaned up the Food Bank Plot, but we did not plant anything there.

We have been trying to watch a nature documentary on the ecosystems around ocean tides (which is really very interesting), but Amanda and I have had trouble staying awake during the whole thing (I have had less trouble). Tonight, on perhaps our fifth try, Amanda finally made it to the end. I made it to the end yesterday.