Now that we shop bi-weekly at one of our local supermarkets to minimize the chances of contracting COVID, it seems grocery shopping has become more difficult. For one thing, we're hauling around more food from supermarket to home than formerly, at one fell swoop. Trying to fit food items into spaces -- refrigerator and pantry -- that seemed overtaxed when we shopped weekly. I've even had to increase the items bought and deposited for the area food bank to compensate for shopping once every two weeks.

And perhaps most painful of all, we cannot go whenever we feel like it, we've now got to prioritize time of day and day of the week to ensure there is less contact with other shoppers. Busiest and less-busy shopping days and times of the day are monitored and the results can be found on the Internet. So we discovered Tuesdays are best for our particular supermarket, and of course arriving at seven in the morning is optimum, giving us an hour to shop, when between 7 and 8 are restricted for the elderly and the health-impaired.

This time I didn't forget our face masks. And they are horribly uncomfortable. I've got chronic rhinitis, tend to breathe through my mouth often, and simply can't abide anything too close to my nostrils. I've got to blow or wipe my nose frequently; like my mother I've inherited a permanently runny nose. Beyond inconvenient, to say the least. Mask-wearing impairs my ability to wipe my nose, and to breathe. Moreover, it also interferes with my eyesight. And wearing eyeglasses is another thing; they tend to fog up when warm, moist breath is funnelled up the mask onto the inner eyeglass lenses.

Complaining? Who, me?! My husband has a far easier time with the face mask than I do, but that's life. We also wore gloves. Rubber gloves are an absolute nuisance, so we wear light pull-on gloves and just wash them in soapy water on return home. We were surprised, after a long weekend and with everything closed yesterday, Victoria Day, to see yawning spaces on the shelves in the grocery. Some items were simply not represented.

If anyone was hoping to bring home flour, any type of flour, they'd be sorely disappointed. There was no yeast to be seen anywhere where we normally find it. We hardly expected, after seeing these items in full display the last several times we shopped, that we'd reverse back to earlier times when flour and yeast were impossible to secure. Personally, we found ourselves short of nothing, save for an absence of fresh asparagus and paprika spice.

In the early afternoon we went off with Jackie and Jillie for our daily ravine walk. Another mild day, albeit windy and mostly overcast. Poor little tykes, they get so dreadfully upset when we leave the house and they're left on their own. They're frantic when we return, and ask for reassurance. So how could we disappoint them by leaving them alone again, twice in the same day?

Since, after our traipse through the ravine, where we came across very few people, and were able to enjoy the trails unimpeded, we decided to go along to a plant nursery, figuring that the big rush before and during the long weekend formally opening the planting season, would have exhausted peoples' desire to buy bedding plants. Our neighbours appear to have acquired all the plants they mean to decorate their gardens with; we bided our time this year.

So, we took them along with us since we felt there was little other option. They were so emotionally exhausted with anticipation they'd be left again, they were panting as though from heat exhaustion, although it was cool enough for light jackets today. When we arrived at our destination the plan was for me, equipped with face mask and gardening gloves, to select the usual number of plants, from geraniums to dahlias, daisies to begonias, lobelia to petunias, to begin planting our garden pots.

I had tried to persuade my husband to fill fewer of those giant glazed clay pots since it's such a difficult, arduous chore to empty them at season's end, but he's adamant, he wants the usual garden. So be it. We noted that suddenly our society had graduated from empty roads to busy-as-usual traffic. And we could hardly believe our eyes when on arrival at the garden centre (an old converted farm, actually) there must have been at least a hundred cars and trucks in the parking lot. Where usually there would be maximum, five.

I was prepared to give up. Then thought I'd better have a look around. And when I did, I was truly dismayed. All the low-slung, plastic-sided 'greenhouses' that extended beyond the parking lot were empty of plants. With the exception of a paltry few offerings. As for all the people buying plants as evidenced by the vehicles, I had no idea where they were, since each of the 'greenhouses' I entered was devoid of their presence; besides myself one or two others rummaging about looking for absent plants. Then I realized there was an awful line-up to enter one of the greenhouses, the one that usually houses vegetable plants and herbs.

I did buy a few of the flowering plants I had set out to acquire, but at premium prices, since all the flats I'd normally buy were nowhere in evidence, only single plants housed in pots, more mature and of course more expensive. We came away with a fraction of what we intended to come home with, a reflection of the fact there was little to choose amongst. Everyone, it seems, is bored as a result of the lockdown, of having to work from home, or having work postponed, or losing employment.

Suddenly, everyone has time on their  hands, and gardening seems like a good option. They're right, good for their mental and physical health. Not to mention the immense pleasure in being able to appreciate and nurture nature's vegetation in a landscape of one's own, however large or small. And with the scarcity of some foodstuffs, what could be more elemental and satisfying than growing your own herbs and vegetables?