Potting soil guilt

I have tried to be responsible during Tennessee’s “Safer At Home” order. As a county employee, I continue to go to work each day, but I’ve tried to limit my shopping, and use a mask when I go to the store or the laundromat. It’s a change for me, because I’m not a weekly-grocery-list kind of person. I’m a lets-go-to-Kroger-and-see-what’s-for-dinner-tonight person. I’ve had to limit myself to much-less-frequent grocery visits.

I get as mad as anyone else when I see families in the store, or when I see people socializing. I do understand that there may be instances where a single parent may literally have no options other than taking the kids to the store, but that’s obviously not the case with some of the couples and entire families that I’ve seen at Walmart and Kroger and Dollar General Market, usually without masks.

But here’s the thing — I see other people complaining on Facebook about this issue, and they almost unanimously seem to complain about people going into the garden department at Walmart and/or getting gardening supplies at Lowe’s. You’re supposed to be shopping for essentials! Gardening is not essential!

Which leaves me with a conundrum. I have three pepper plants in red Solo cups, grown from seeds planted weeks and weeks ago.

Last year’s pepper plant was Pep, so this year we have Manny, Moe and Jack.

They have been sitting on an inside windowsill, but I’ve started the “hardening” process by…