Quarantine entry #79 - May 8

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. On this particular occasion, we are talking about the natural world once more: Canada is about to be ‘invaded’ by the giant hogweed of all plants!..

What is a giant hogweed? For those that do not know, it is a perennial herbaceous flowering plant can grow up to 5 m in height, and cause 3^rd-degree burns; essentially, is the Asian giant hornet was a plant, it would be a giant hogweed.

 Initially, the giant hogweed grew in the Caucasus region of Europe; from there, it reached across the Old World, and then – to North America, aka the New World. Apparently, it is a trait of the Heracleum genus, as at least two other hogweed species – Sosnowsky’s and Persian – did something similar to the giant hogweed; it isn’t certain if they’d become established in the U.S. and Canada, but they are considered to be invasive species in parts of Europe all the same. Anything else?

…New Zealand is supposedly free of COVID-19 – officially. Whether or not this will come true for real is another matter, but for now? Lucky bastards; at least Canada and U.S. are finally may be beginning to open parts of their border for real now. Yay! Maybe I will be coming home now…but given how sucky real life is, I would not count on it, or perhaps, I should clarify:

When I come home, it will not be up to my plans, but rather, it will be a hollow victory, one that will steal all of the joy from this achievement, and as such, I do not look forwards toward it as I should.

No, really, just look – after the COVID-19 outbreak, we had an Asian giant hornet invasion; we have a giant hogweed invasion; we have civil unrest, because everyone is bored stiff about at the COVID-19; we got the election-2020 on one hand, and whatever the Hell the top brass in Ottawa is thinking on the other. Yes, going home shall be good, but somehow I am quite certain that real life will create a way of ruining it, period. And that  is before pointing out that the self-isolation is not really over, a large chunk of social life is still locked down, and is it any surprise that the civil unrest in North America is still being largely uncontrolled?

…Okay, ‘uncontrolled’ might be the wrong word here: in the U.S., ‘civil unrest’ is slowly transfiguring into a police reform, while in Canada? That is blurrier; it might be just a way for Canadians to blow-off steam, while the top brass in Ottawa decides as to where it goes from there, which brings us to the honorary mention of the U.K., whose COVID-19 misadventures appear to have buried the matter of Brexit… at least for now.

This – kind of, sort of – returns us back to the U.S., for as we have talked before, the U.K. Brexit would be most beneficial… to the U.S., for reasons that we have discussed before, but now the COVID-19/George Floyd civil unrest combination has ended it all for good…at least for now.

What next? Hard to say. Life goes on, and today I wanted to return to the domestic cat once more. Only… all of the latest news, about the giant hogweed and whatnot had pushed me out of mind frame, so here is a brief drabble about the lynx instead:

A lynx lurks in a dark forest, next to a sylvan path. Though a cousin of the house cat, it is more of a large dog in size. A lynx’s tail is short, its’ ears got tufts on tips, its’ hide is mottled. This lynx in question is lying on a tree branch, waiting... Do not go past this tree, or the lynx will get you. It will lunge at anyone, straight from the tree!

End

PS: This is it for now – see you all soon!