Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California, August 1, 2020

I went to the back of the garden a day or so after my weekly watering, and lo and behold, found a whole crop of fungi fully grown beneath one of my small ferns. A total overnight surprise. We’ve never had such a crop before. This morning I returned to check them out again, and found nothing but myriad slimy, silver snail paths criss-crossing a black kind of dust that spread beneath the fern. Somebody must have had a luscious midnight snack!

Yesterday we took a rare drive across town for a doctor’s visit and were surprised by what we saw: empty streets at morning rush hour save for the pick-up trucks of carpenters and painters unloading gear for the day, interspersed with moving vans that blocked the streets half loaded. Block after block, street after street after lonely street. I guess folks are either taking this pandemic pause to gussy up their houses or they are abandoning the city altogether... or maybe they are doing both. It is, I’m afraid, a taste of what’s to come in my adopted city - closed businesses and empty homes (freshly painted) looking for life to recommence.