I read in Forbes that one in 800 people in South Dakota has died from COVID — which made me wonder where other states fall on that spectrum. Mostly better — the Dakotas are eight and nine on the list. It looks like 1 in 518 people in New Jersey have died, 1 in 559 New Yorkers.
It was warm over the weekend, rained Monday — and, as the temperature dropped, it changed over to ice and snow. The tree branches are all covered in a bit of ice with a lot of snow sticking to the ice. With saplings drooping over and tree boughs pulled down, we have a winter wonderland.
Autumn is coming to a close. We had an great growing season this year — I covered the lettuce beds with fabric tents three or four nights in November because temps would be near freezing. We had a few nights where our small pond froze on the surface, but tomorrow night will be the first sustained sub-freezing temperature. I got a bit of a late start to outdoor gardening because we rebuilt the garden beds in a sunnier location, but I still managed a 200 day growing season. Adding another six weeks for the seeds started indoors, I had plants growing for 244 days — about 2/3 of the year! Moving the beds to a sunnier location greatly increased productivity, and the compost in the garden area has turned into a large pile of dirt. We’ve been adding new stuff to the north side of the pile, and I’ve been moving everything south as I turn the pile. It is impressive how much the pile of grass and leaves shrinks down as it decomposes. In early autumn, I put about 16 cubic feet of compost into the garden beds to make a lettuce and kale bed. Yesterday, I amended another fifteen cubic feet of the lettuce bed. Anya and I used two cucumber A-frame trellises and a few of the tomato trellises to create a structure and covered the lettuce bed with greenhouse plastic. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue growing lettuce throughout the winter. I also plan on planting the broccoli, brussle sprouts, and cabbage under the cover next April.
I was worried the chicks we got in August would be too small when the temps dropped, but they are fifteen weeks old today. They love being outside and fluff up really big when it gets cold. Both the coop and chicken tractor have a wide roost so they can keep their toes under their warm feathers.
In the next few weeks, we’ll build some nesting boxes and get the coop finalized. I also want to finish making packets for the seeds we harvested this year and file them into my seed storage boxes. In the next week or two, I will be making a lot of candied almonds — vanilla cinnamon candied almonds, maple roasted salted almonds, and some plain candied almonds — for us and to give away to neighbors.
This winter, I want to finish the crochet blanket I am making for our family room. It should be a thick, warm blanket that we can all snuggle under. I want to finish Anya’s new Peppermint Swirl dress. I also want to make her micro-corduroy dress/tunic/shirt to replace the one she outgrew this past year. Both will be worn in the spring/summer, but sewing is a cold/snowy day activity for me.
The moon rose tonight as the sun was setting, which produced a beautiful combination of colors.
Using the data from https://covidtracking.com/data/national/cases: in the most recent seven day span (10-16 November), 1,056,346 people in the US have been infected with this coronavirus. The total number of cases yesterday was 11,047,064. That means 9.562% of the *total cases* in the US were new cases in the past week.
This is how exponential growth works — and why you heard a lot about ‘flattening the curve’ earlier in the year. If you put a penny on the first square of a chess board, double it and put two pennies on the second square, double it and put four pennies on the third square, and continue in that fashion … mathematically, you have 2^n pennies on each square, where n is the numeric sequence of the square, 0-63. On the last square in the first row, square #7, there are 2^7 pennies — 128 pennies, or a buck and twenty eight cents. Not a lot. And the end of the second row, you have 2^15 pennies — 32,768 pennies. That’s $327.68 — over three hundred bucks. A lot more than a buck, but not a huge amount of money. But you’re up to 2^23 at the end of the third row — 8,388,608 pennies or $83,886.08. Eighty three grand is a lot of money. By the time you get to the mid-point on the board, the end of the fourth row, you have 2^31 pennies on a square. 2,147,483,648 pennies for $21,474,836.48 — over twenty million dollars. A lot of money, but it’s possible. The second half of the chessboard is where exponential growth becomes unsustainable. The end of the fifth row is 2^39 — 549,755,813,888 pennies. The end of the sixth row is 2^47 — 140,737,488,355,328 pennies. The end of the seventh row is 2^55 — On the final square, you have 2^63 … 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 pennies for $92,233,720,368,547,758.08 … 92 quadrillion dollars. If the going price of Earth is only five quadrillion dollars, you’re putting a marker for the entire solar system (and then some) on that last square.
And that ignores the accumulating total — while you have 92 quadrillion dollars on the final square, you have another 92 quadrillion dollars on the entire rest of the board. Now, obviously, we are not doubling our rate of infections every day. But we’re entering “second half of the board” territory just the same.
Another cool mushroom growing in our yard
Reminder — Zeta isn’t the last letter in the Greek alphabet. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa … so don’t think you missed a dozen tropical storms when you see Zeta in the news.
A cluster of mushrooms growing in pine needles
It’s often difficult to conceptualize large numbers — something that allows statistics dealing with large numbers to convey something other than reality. I think I heard Trump say the government is ready to vaccinate 200k people a day. That sounds like a lot of people (it is a lot of people), but there are a lot of people in the US: an estimated 328.2 million according to a quick Google search.
That’s four and a half years to vaccinate the current population of the US at 200k a day, every day. Which doesn’t take into account new people being born (or aging into the range where a vaccine is administered). The CDC shows 3.79 million births in 2018 — of course that number changes every year, and it’s been decreasing. But at 3.5 million births per year, new people still add a few months to the vaccination timeline. About four and three quarter years to vaccinate the US population. And that assumes a one-dose vaccine. Administering two doses to everyone, at 200k people per year, would take just under ten years. Saying ‘it could take us five years to vaccinate everyone’ isn’t nearly as impressive sounding as ‘we can administer 200,000 vaccines each day’ — but it’s the same thing.
10
minutes304 cloves garlic
1/2 cup olive oil
2-3 Tbsp hop tea
1 tsp honey
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp Aleppo Pepper