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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (March 19, 2020)
culture Planning Your Corona-cation HOW NOT TO LET SOCIAL DISTANCING GET YOU DOWN By Elisha Young J ust a couple months ago, like many Ore- gonians, I was in the throes of planning a small spring break trip with my family: a trip to the city up north to go museum hopping complete with a tour of our fa- vorite restaurants and a lazy jaunt down the coast on the way home. After COVID-19 hit, I realized our trip wouldn’t hap- pen. Though I understood and fully supported the rea- soning, I was bummed at first. Social distancing meant the end of the fun we had so been looking forward to. It’s not often my husband, my 7-year-old and I have the same days off, so I hit the draw- ing board to brainstorm how we — and other families — could make the most of this extended spring break. What exactly is social distancing? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s staying out of group settings, avoiding gatherings and keeping a dis- tance of about six feet from others as much as possible. Nowhere in the guidelines does it say you have to put your life on hold. But with a little creativity you can take a vacation right in your living room. Thanks to advanced technologies you can travel anywhere on the planet without setting foot in the airport. Aerial tours abound on Google Earth, with some areas allowing you to walk down the streets. My little one loves taking those Google Earth tours and investigating new places through its maps. Several large museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Louvre and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, offer virtual tours. You can enjoy a world of cul- ture and beauty while wearing pajamas — and it’s free. There’s truly no shortage of things to do in your house: crafts, board games, documentaries, reading and even gardening with the nice weather coming up. The Seattle Aquarium, Oregon Zoo and many other organizations are also hosting daily live streams that are both educational and entertaining. If you’re feeling fancy and motivated, it’s also a great time to get started on spring cleaning. But what can you do when you feel like you may go mad if you don’t get out of your house? Where can you take your stir-crazy kids when they are literally bounc- ing of the walls? Outside! You can breathe in the fresh air, with plenty of room to have your own space apart from others. Oregon is filled with amazing natural wonders and an extensive trail system. While we won’t head to the lo- cal playground any time soon, this is a great time to get out and explore — especially those places off the beat- en path. (See a list of top 10 local hikes in our What’s Happening calendar this week, while they’re still open.) Several are within an hour’s drive of Eugene, like the McKenzie River and the Santiam sno-parks. Best practice would be to avoid areas of heavy use, and to have a back-up plan. If you arrive at a trailhead that appears to have more foot traffic than you are comfortable with, head to the next. A bit farther out, the southern coast boasts some of the loneliest beaches in Oregon, like Three Sisters Beach south of Port Orford. And eastern Oregon has no shortage of places to explore: bird watching near Steens Mountain, hiking Hart Antelope National Wildlife Refuge or exploring the old wagon ruts of the Oregon Trail are all options. I’ll be spending the majority of this corona-cation at home, by the fire with a series of good books. We have a schedule of upcoming live streams from children’s mu- seums, the zoo and a few virtual tours in the works. We also planned a small trip to eastern Oregon, staying at a delightful and very remote Airbnb. Our plan includes stops at Smith Rock, the Painted Hills and the John Day Fossil Beds area. We expect to encounter very few people and plan to eat in at our cabin. If you do venture out, try to support as many mom and pop stores and small, local businesses as you can. These establishments need the support to stay afloat in these unprecedented times. Enjoy the extra time with family if you can. Most of all, keep calm, relax — and keep living your life. With precautions, that is. ■ gardening Gardener Power GROWING IN A TIME OF CLIMATE CHANGE By Rachel Foster D id spring arrive a month early in Eugene this year? While it’s tough not to enjoy good, mild gardening weather in February, it makes me uneasy to see virtually all types of daffodils in bloom at the same time. Shouldn’t it be cooler? And wetter? This smells like climate change to me. What can we do about it, if anything? Can we as individuals make a difference? In December, 2018 Anne Lovejoy posted to her blog at LogHousePlants.com a piece titled “Rise Up and Draw Down: How Gardeners can mitigate Climate Change.” Much of what Lovejoy proposes in the article won’t be new to readers, especially if you garden or- ganically. But Lovejoy does make the very good point that more than 90 million Americans are gardeners. That should give us, collectively, the power to create significant change, “yard by yard, town by town, state by state.” Some things are easy. If you haven’t already reduced or eliminated inessential lawn area, sworn off gas pow- ered tools and fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesti- 14 M A R C H 1 9 , 2 0 2 0 cides and taken steps to reduce water use, you can do so now. Most of us can plant more shrubs and trees, which sequester much more carbon that herbaceous plants and turf. According to Lovejoy, Americans spend more than $3 billion a year on those synthetic fertilizers and pes- ticides, which, she points out, damage soil life and de- grade our soil. Instead, we can use our collective pur- chasing power to make things better. We can search out organically raised vegetable and flower starts, and buy organic fertilizers. Eat organic — from our own gar- dens and from organic farmers, too. If we can afford it, we can invest in good quality tools that last beyond a lifetime — and look after them. Soil is one area where we probably underestimate our collective potential to combat climate change. Tak- ing care to create and maintain healthy soil is one of the best ways to store carbon. Applying organic mulches to bare soil between plants or in resting veggie beds Is the best way to improve and maintain soil structure. Use compost, fall leaves. straw or even fir bark — whatever is available. Homemade compost made from dead leaves and vegetable waste is fine for this purpose, but many ur- ban gardeners lack the room (or are reluctant to make room!) to produce enough compost to keep hard-work- ing garden beds carbon-rich. That’s where cover crops come in. Sowing clover, oat or field peas into overwin- tering beds can provide a lot of carbon-rich and nutri- ent rich material for the price of a little seed. On a small scale, I’ve also used leftover, outdated seed of hardy garden crops like peas, arugula and lettuce. I always get enough germination to cover the soil, especially if I let the least obnoxious weeds join the party. According to soil experts, soil disturbance should be minimized. Just scratch compost and other amend- ments into the top three inches before planting. Don’t overwork it — a “fine tilth” is really only needed where you are sowing seed. Carbon sequestration can be speeded up in heavy, poor or worn out soils by incorpo- rating organic matter deeply, in a method called double digging. Once you have a healthy, well-drained soil, cut back on tilling and digging, which releases carbon back into the atmosphere. ■ Rachel Foster lives and gardens in Eugene. She can be reached at rfoster@efn.org E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
