Hi folks!
How are you making out?
Yeah, us too🤷🏿♀️.
Somehow, in the midst of a global pandemic, this week felt particularly disorienting.
It wouldn’t feel right to jump into grocery, gardening and community news without acknowledging some of what went down this week. People being accosted, hurt, and killed because of their skin colour. Pigment. Culture.
We know it’s nothing new. We know it happens Everywhere. In the US. In Canada. In Toronto. Parkdale is achingly close to home.
We know that the tragedies and near tragedies that took place this week are just a few currently visible signals of systemic, institutionalized inequity. Massive, pervasive, perpetual unfairness. The challenge is so big it’s hard to fathom let alone confront.
So we mostly do our best to not be part of the problem.
But when the problem is “the way things are,” not changing things IS being part of the problem.
Here’s one small thing people can do. Contribute to a gofundme for Regis Korchinski Paquet. Or to The Stop, around the corner. Or FoodShare.
This wasn’t supposed to be a lecture, it just felt like, since we have a teeny tiny platform, that we should say something.
Today we’d like to tell you about:
- Some good news
- COVID-19 precautions updates
- Garden Centre News
A bit of good news
- The team-mate who tested positive a couple of weeks ago is on the mend
COVID-19 precautions
We’re still practicing every measure we’ve added since the start of the pandemic, including enforcing the use of masks.
This still seems to be a problem for some people. Hear us out?
We’re enforcing masks for two reasons
- All of the health authorities we cited in our Mask-gate post still promote the practice (eg: Health Canada, Public Health Ontario, Toronto Public Health, The Ontario Medical Association, Centre for Disease Control, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, Harvard Medical).
- We’ve yet to see any research from a credible source suggesting that masks, in and of themselves, and used properly, cause problems. Not instead of hand sanitization. Not instead of physical distancing. On top of them.
We’re happy to consider further research as it emerges. Send us a note through the contact form on the website if you’ve learned something that might enlighten us. Please try to keep the politics out of it.
And all that said:
please don’t mask police or Covid-shame other people. Just because someone isn’t doing it perfectly doesn’t mean they’re a menace to society. Being scared doesn’t give you a right to harass people. The masks are a tiny extra layer of precaution. Wash your hands, avoid touching your face as much as possible between disinfecting, and try to maintain physical distance from people you are going to be talking to for 15 minutes.
We’ll do the same, plus the other hundred measures that represent our current normal.
Remember to be excellent to each other.
Garden Centre Updates
Thanks for your patience and collaboration in making the start of the gardening season as low stress as it can be, all things being equal.
We’re updating the site as best we can as items come in but the fastest way to find out whether we have exactly what you’re after at the moment is by asking at the front gate.
Deliveries are moving along really, partly thanks to a helping hand from the team at Ecoman. Jonas can share gardening and landscape advice (and services) and has some great ideas for people in apartments and condos who want to make their small outdoor space green.
So far here’s what we know:
Lines
- The lineup, even at its peak, has never been for longer than an hour.
- Afternoon lines seem to be around 30-40 mins long.
- Morning lines seem longer (Maybe people are trying to beat a rush, beat the heat, or just get a jump on the day?).
Stock
- Rocks, trees and shrubs aren’t here yet.
- We have plenty of herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, you name it).
- Vegetables are completely sold out for this year. This is an industry-wide issue. Farmers called us in March re: orders. Retailers had no idea what was ahead and must have under-ordered, resulting in growers planting less.
- The annuals are fine. We occasionally run out of certain things and supply isn’t as stable as usual, so if you need something specific, please ask at the gate before you wait in line.
- Perennials are fine.
- A good selection of Tropicals will be available online and in-store beginning Friday, June 5th.
- There have been soil shortages but we have plenty at the moment.
We hear the weather’s going to be okay this weekend. We hope you get some fresh. Stay safe.