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.Every profession, no matter what field is its scope, is precious and should be valued. It is one of the greatest achievements of an individual; to have a profession at its choice, dream and goal. There are lots of field of professions that exist in the world today: accounting, engineering, architecture, education, business administration, law and the most common field is the field of medicine. Having a profession is not that easy since it has accompanying risks and consequences that you have to face while you exercise your profession. Talking about riskiness, the medical field is said to be the most risky field of all professions. In the medical world that comprise the doctors, nurses, caregivers, paramedics and the other health care providers, they are exposed to lots of risk and consequences and as much as possible, they should avoid it towards their patients. Medical malpractice is one of the most tragic risks and it is sometime inevitable. Medical malpractice is a form of negligence by act or omission done by a professional especially of a health care provider towards his or her patients while practicing his or her field of profession. What happens usually is that the health care providers deviate from the regulations and standards due to fraud, errors, bribery of just to hide a lie and a secret. When these incidents happen, there is a big need of medical malpractice lawyers to settle, investigate and justify the accidents. Click to read more here about NYC Personal Injury Attorney.

Medical malpractice lawyers are professionals or experts that are in the scope of medicine. They are the lawyers that have a wide scope in the medicine world; the medical problems and the medical laws. With the help of these medical malpractice lawyers, the medical circumstances faced by the accused health care providers can have its claim; reach the courts in the fastest and complete way possible. Their job is to work with the hospital system, investigate the issue, and learn well the medical systems and laws and to find out what the most possible legal and right options for you. It is a matter of grace period given to you and your patient while finding ways and means to fight for your rights. Major operations or any other medical treatment requires waiver but this does not mean that you will never be held liable whenever you commit medical malpractice. It is still your duty to give your patient due care in treating his or her illness. Appropriate standards and regulations are given and presented for you and you should be very conscious and aware of each of its details. It is better that you will have your own and personal medical malpractice lawyers ready in cases of inevitable accidents. Medical malpractice lawyers are not just for instances when a medicine specialist has done a medical malpractice but they also fight for the rights of the specialists whenever they are deprived or accused of something that is not factual.

This still seems to be a problem for some people. Hear us out?

We’re enforcing masks for two reasons

1. 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)
2. 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.