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Merry Christmas!

 

Photo taken by my cousin at the Cleveland Botanical Garden Glasshouse. 

I'm back from a wonderful Christmas in Cleveland, where my cousins and I watched movies, went to the botanical gardens and had lunch a restaurant in Little Italy. The botanical gardens had wreaths, gingerbread houses, table settings and Christmas trees created by dozens of different garden societies and individuals vying for first place. The glass house was full of butterflies and tropical plants--some of them arranged to look like Christmas trees, like the one in the picture. Outside, white statice was still in bloom and I could even smell some of the herbs. I saw roses (dormant) that I hadn't seen since I moved away from Denver: alba semi-plena, Marchesa Bocella and Salet. Hmm...maybe these could do well in Indianapolis. 

Oddly, most people were wearing masks outside in the gardens even though COVID has little to no spread outdoors, and cloth masks don't stop aerosol particles. At the two Wendy's restaurants in Columbus where I had lunch, one was take-out only and the other had no dine-in customers except for me. An employee said that was normal. But the Italian restaurant in Cleveland was hopping in the middle of the afternoon. Half the employees wore masks; our waitress wore red lipstick. It was the warmest, coziest, most lively place I've been in two years. 

We wore masks where required. But I'll be darned if I'm going to quarantine for 10 days or wait in line for two hours for a test when I don't have COVID symptoms. My dog sitter caught COVID right before I left, but she still came over and fed Biggs. Since surface transmission hasn't been a significant vector for COVID, I'm not worried about the little time she spent at my house. If I get COVID, it's far more likely to have come from the restaurant. 

The local news showed several events being canceled in Ohio; not so in Indiana. One, we're pretty much done with the hysteria here, and two, we had a late summer wave that didn't happen in Cleveland and COVID is quickly running out of Hoosiers to infect. COVID hospital admissions here are tanking and officials have identified only one case of Omicron. Hopefully, we're starting to see the end of serious COVID. 

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Comments

Lowcarb team member said…
So pleased you had a good time with your cousins.
That 'Christmas Tree' looks great.

Wishing you a happy 2022.

All the best Jan
December 29, 2021
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Jan. Hope you and Eddie had a merry Christmas, too.
December 29, 2021
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