I was putting in some volunteer time and someone recognized me as “The Plant Swap Lady.” Is there going to be one this year?

Yes. There are going to be multiple plant and seed swaps during the month of March 2021. Masks will be required. The location will be wherever the Norwich, CT Sunday Community Meal is. They have very kindly given permission to set up separate tables from where the packed to go lunches will be served so people can also pick up the seeds we have on hand and also any plants that are brought in for adoption.

URI and the Rhode Island Master Gardeners are looking forward to 2022 when they can once again meet to do the seed packet sorting and re-packaging of the seeds donated by Rhode Island Job Lot stores. For 2021 they were just able to ship the seeds to a variety of Rhode Island Community Gardens. The seeds at the Norwich Plant and Seed Swap are packets and seed collections left from previous years. I have been assured that most of them will still sprout. I was also advised to plant extra and then share the plants with family, friends and neighbors.

If you are looking for plant and gardening advice please check out the Facebook page Norwich Plant Swap. There is a wide variety of advice postings for both indoor, outdoor and the 2021 fad of winter gardening. I just re-post the work of others. I am no where near a good enough indoor or outdoor gardener to give anyone advice.

I tried Winter Gardening for the first time last year with only so-so success but then I am only a so-so gardener. Not for lack of trying though.

I met my first winter gardener a few years ago who had the most amazing assortment of vegetable plants to give away. He and all the subsequent videos and articles make it sound so easy but I think you have to tweak it and do what works for you. Begin with plastic water or milk jugs. Cut it horizontally in half. Some say to make holes in the bottom for drainage and some say to just put in a layer of gravel for any extra water to drain into. Then layer with fertilizer, and good growth medium. Personally I am not certain what good growth medium is. I took good growth medium to be soil. But depending on what you are trying to grow it could be a mix of sand and soil. I am also not precisely certain what enriched soil is. You’ll have to figure all those out for yourself and what you want to grow. Anyway, the next direction was to plant the seeds according to the directions and mist the soil do not drown the seeds. Then put the top of the jug back on securing it with duct tape and yes keep the cap on. My winter gardener said to line the jugs up near the foundation of the house, and any outbuildings that receive direct sunlight at anytime during the day. Do not fiddle with them. Just let them stay even if it snows and freezes. They are seeds and plants and they will do what comes naturally to them. It may be go into a dormant period or it may be to grow, grow, grow to get nearer the warmth of the sun.

I am looking forward to seeing my first crocus and my happy daffodils. They will all be coming soon. Remember you heard it here first. Spring is on its way!

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don’t hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

Norwich, CT will not be the most reported city in the Great Backyard Bird Count of 2021. But thanks to the many reporters of the duck and eagle watchers at Brown Park in Norwich CT it may have one of the most reported bird watching sites in Connecticut.

It has been wonderful to see all the cars lined up from around 7 am with coffees in hand, to almost 6 pm with a lot of tea or coffee drinks in hand when not with their phone cameras and binoculars searching the skies for the hungry eagle.

A lot of the observers are still feeding bread regardless of the signs with the warnings saying how bad it is for the ducks, geese and swans. A few people are tossing dried peas onto the water and a few frozen peas and green beans.

The seagulls are not as plentiful as one would imagine. In fact, I counted more seagulls at the McDonalds parking lot than I did at Brown Park and none at all while at Burger King or Kentucky Fried Chicken. At my house I am counting chickadees, sparrows, and cardinals. This year my doves are missing. You read correctly. This year my doves are missing. Last year I had plenty of large, healthy and well fed doves cooing and calling from dawn to dusk. This year, a lot of silence. I am of course hoping for their return later in the spring but its still strange.

There is some early interest in the nest at the peak of the house but no one has moved in yet. Much to my delight there are fewer squirrels bothering my feeders and suet which means there may be some bigger hunters living in the area. Its been a little too chilly for me to sit on the lookout for specifics but in the afternoon I still see only the usual three hawks that hunt my neighborhood for small critters and mice.

So only one day is left to count the birds in your location and a few weeks to report the types and numbers of birds you have seen these past four days. Www.birdcount.org and there are links to photo identifiers for bird types if you take clearer pictures than I do. I have been able to count the birds I have seen without too much trouble including the Washington Street house with all the vultures.

The vultures are really quite the site to see and how many of us can re-call when they chose to roost on the wires by the entrance to the old Ames shopping center. What birds are you seeing? Are you counting and reporting them? Www.birdcount.org. It only takes fifteen minutes of your time and you can report the birds you see in your yard, a park, a parking lot, from your window, or on your walk.

Thank you for participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count 2021!

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

I am excited. Without question, Presidents Day Weekend is my favorite long weekend of the year but not for the reason you are thinking. Presidents are, of course, important but it is also the Great Backyard Bird Count! It is my excuse to spread a little bird seed on the ground. Hang an extra block or two of suet and seed and then sit back by the window with my tea and sometimes a cookie or three and enjoy the birds. The closest to work I have to do is count the different types of birds and report the types and numbers on www.birdcount.org.

This year they have made it even easier with no waiting. You can start entering bird lists at midnight local time on the first day of the count, anywhere in the world. Data entry remains open until March 1, but the information you enter should only be from the four days of the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Participating is easy, fun to do alone, or with others, and can be done anywhere you find birds. Simply watch birds for 15 minutes or more, at least once over the four days, February 12-15, 2021, and tell them what you see! When this began the only way to enter a bird count was on a computer or a lap top. Now there are so many different ways to enter your data I am not certain I can list them all but here are a few to help you pick the best tool to use for sharing your birds sightings:

• If you are new to the count and have a smartphone, try using the Merlin Bird ID app. It is FREE and easy to use. Merlin covers bird species from 7 continents and is available in 8 languages.
• If you have participated in the count before, try eBird Mobile app or enter your bird list on the eBird website (desktop/laptop). The FREE eBird Mobile app is a fast way to enter your bird lists right from the palm of your hand.
• If you are participating as a group, see instructions for Group Counting.

Norwich, CT has been the most reported City in Connecticut in the past and with your help it can be again. Take a walk and count and report the birds you see. Take a hike in Mohegan Park. The trails are open. Be aware they are not shoveled. Yes you can count the types and numbers of birds you see while waiting at your favorite drive-thru restaurant. What birds and water fowl are there at Brown Park? Occum Park? Greenville playground? The fish ladder?

Age is not a factor in the bird count so spend some time with the young and spend some time with the seniors. Modern bird watching can be done together over the phone. While my friend is in a care facility, I dropped off some tea and cookies before hand. Then at a convenient time we will both settle in to our comfy chairs and watch and count the birds at our respective birdfeeders for 15 or maybe even 30 minutes while we sip tea and enjoy our cookies. I know we will have a great visit with fresh new things to chat about happening right before our very eyes.

COVID Statement: Watching birds is a safe and enjoyable activity to do during the Covid global pandemic. For the 2021 Great Backyard Bird Count, participants are strongly urged to comply with all current country, province, state, First People’s lands, or municipal Covid-19 regulations and guidelines. This includes, but is not limited to, social distancing while bird watching and wearing a mask when birding with others.

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

Because I work as a volunteer with multiple first responding organizations throughout the year I was given the opportunity to receive a Covid -19 Vaccination. Although surprised and feeling very guilty I took advantage of the opportunity presented to me.

I received a Moderna first shot with no reaction. Not even a little redness at the injection site. I even wondered if I had been somehow given a placebo.

Friday, I received my second shot. Again nothing. I even picked up some Chinese chicken soup in case I needed something light and brothy and was too sick to cook. Preparation is key. No reaction until I starting poking at what looked like a bee sting where I received the shot. A little pink dot surrounded by a little circle of pink warm flesh. I could feel it when I touched it but not if I didn’t pay attention to it.

Saturday morning I could feel it enough to imagine I had been bitten by a really big mosquito not a bee. The ring was a little larger and warmer. I also had mild headache so I took two not aspirin substitutes and went on with my day. I was thirstier than normal and went so far as to get a blood orange lemonade for lunch. Too much information? Sorry. The mild, headache returned on Saturday evening so two more pills and a movie I cannot recall as I fell sound asleep.

Sunday morning. I woke up early and peppy. You heard me. I woke up bright and early and full of energy. I had my Sunday morning chores completed by 9 AM and I was looking for some other mischief to get into. I shoveled my walk every time the snow built to two inches just to expend a little energy. By Sunday afternoon I noticed that I had no headache at all. I can still feel my injection site and its still got its pink ring but I am imagining that the ring means my defenses are building. Its all good.

I hope this will help some of the people who are hearing the horror stories of the vaccination. The current available vaccinations are new and there is certainly a lot that the scientists and medical professionals do not know but it is what we have available at the moment. Use your judgment and that of your doctor for what is the right choice for you. You, are the individual in control of what is put into your body.

One last thing, if you choose to get the vaccination, make certain to keep the card they give you in a safe place. That proof of vaccination someday may or may not be required to be shown for boarding an air plane, train, bus or a venue for a sports event, concert, wedding or other large social event. I do not have a crystal ball to look into the future but that is my guess for what may be coming.

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

Lisa Abend for the New York Times on February 1, 2021 wrote the background and plan so much better than I could ever imagine I will attach it below. Reading her article gave me an idea I cannot make happen but I can “suggest.”

Many of the local theaters in Norwich, New London, Groton, Lisbon have not been hosting full houses for the last year. Many have started a “rent the theater for your family” programs. So I was thinking along those lines, what if a company made a ‘generous donation’ to a theater, or play house, and awarded to one of their employees, a double feature movie with Pop Corn, Drink, Candy. A chance to be alone (ok they probably want to bring along one other person of their choice.)

This could be a time of complete relaxation for an employee who has been responding to the pressures, stresses and responsibilities at home and at work since the beginning of the pandemic. Of course this could be blown up a bit with a take away dinner served on a white tablecloth and served on real plates with not plastic silverware. OK I am getting a bit fanciful but I admit I would be delighted to coordinate the event for a company and arrange it with the theater of their choosing.

Don’t you think your employees and co-workers deserve more than a sticker or a pin for their dedication and hard work?

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

A Movie Festival for One, on a Tiny Nordic Island

Sweden’s Goteborg Film Festival has taken social distancing to the extreme, offering one attendee a week on a barren island, with only the competition films for company.

Lisa Enroth, an emergency nurse, will spend a week in an isolated lighthouse keeper’s cottage, watching the 70 movies in competition at the Goteborg Film Festival.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York Times By Lisa Abend Feb. 1, 2021

As they do at the opening of any star-studded film festival, photographers scrambled for position, training their lenses on the spot where audience members would alight. But when the first — and only — guest of honor arrived, she was clad not in a tuxedo or sparkly gown, but in jeans and an orange puffer jacket (designer unknown). There was no red carpet beneath her feet, only bare frozen ground. And instead of sauntering into a plush cinema buzzing with celebrities, she climbed into a speedboat and zipped off across the frigid water to a tiny island where she would settle in for the first premiere.

As festivals around the world grapple with the pandemic, the Goteborg Film Festival, which opened in Sweden’s second largest city on Jan. 29, hasn’t so much accepted social distancing as escalated it. Over the course of the coming week, it will hold screenings in two urban venues for just one festival attendee. And it has also sent a single viewer to a tiny, barren island in the North Atlantic to watch the 70 films in competition — alone.

Hamneskar, a rocky outcrop some 25 miles from Goteborg, was nicknamed Pater Noster by sailors who would recite the Lord’s Prayer as they neared its treacherous waters.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York Times

Some festivals, like Venice’s in September, have faced the pandemic as diminished versions of their normally glitzy selves, with alternately seated theaters and mandatory temperature checks. Others, like Sundance and the Berlinale, now pushed until March 2021, have gone entirely digital, offering streaming access to films and other events. Some organizers are postponing their festivals, crossing their fingers that further down the line pandemic regulations will allow for a more usual festival experience: On Jan. 27, the Cannes festival announced that it would take place in July, rather than its customary May.

But at Goteborg, the Nordic countries’ most important festival, organizers have made an unusual virtue of necessity. “So many people who have been home alone, unable to meet friends or family, have turned to cinema for company and comfort,” said the festival’s artistic director, Jonas Holmberg. “We wanted to experiment with that, to isolate that feeling, and take it to the extreme. So we thought, ‘Why don’t we isolate the person on a small island with nothing but films?’”

As the only country in Europe to resist a formal lockdown, Sweden has followed its own path through the pandemic, neither recommending mask use nor shutting down schools until December, when a disproportionately high mortality rate from the disease forced it to change strategy.

But much of the country has complied with guidelines issued by the government, and after months of even voluntary social distancing and lockdowns, a wintry week alone on an island with only movies for company might seem the last thing most people would need. Yet when an evocative online video announced the contest, over 12,000 people applied for the solo experience. On Jan. 19, the festival selected Lisa Enroth, a 41-year-old emergency nurse from the town of Skovde, in southern Sweden, as the winner.Some of the films Lisa Enroth will have the opportunity to see while on Pater Noster, from left: “Tove,” “Conference” (a film from the Social Distances section), “The Conversations of Donkey and Rabbit” (a short film from the Lockdown Cinema section), “Pleasure,” “Incredible Thoughts of a Woman on a Tier” (a short film from the Lockdown Cinema section) and “Another Round.”Credit…via Goteborg Film Festival

Like health care workers everywhere, Enroth has found the past several montstressful. “Every day at the hospital we’ve been dealing with so much,” she said. “With all the patients, and all the new protocols, I’ve never felt so unisolated in my life.

So when she saw the video’s call for applications, she didn’t hesitate. “Alone in nature, on an island? Plus movies? I was like, ‘Yes, I need this.’”

The hospital agreed to give Enroth time off (“My boss is a movie buff,” she explained) and on Jan. 30, a boat brought her to Hamneskar, a rocky outcrop some 25 miles from Goteborg that was nicknamed Pater Noster by sailors who would recite the Lord’s Prayer as they neared its treacherous waters. There, she took up residence in the former keeper’s cottage that sits aside the island’s cast-iron lighthouse, and settled in for the movie marathon.

During her time on Pater Noster, Enroth will have access to the 70 films screening at the festival, which include the Finnish Oscar contender “Tove,” Thomas Vinterberg’s acclaimed “Another Round” and the Goteborg native Ninja Thyberg’s “Pleasure,” all of which are competing for best Nordic film. International films in competition include Emma Dante’s “The Macaluso Sisters,” set in Sicily, and Charlène Favier’s “Slalom,” about elite downhill skiers abused by their coach. There is also a separate section, called Social Distances, featuring films created in response to the pandemic, and one called Lockdown Cinema for short films made in quarantine.

Streamed through the festival’s website and available to the public, all of the films have scheduled premiere times online. But a handful of viewers are also having their own unusually isolated encounters with them. Coinciding with each online premiere, the films will also screen at Goteborg’s Draken movie theater (capacity 708) and the Scandinavium arena (whose 12,000 seats normally host concert goers or hockey fans) for a single viewer who has won a seat through a raffle.

A screening for one (in this case, Lova Lakso) at the Draken movie theater in Goteborg.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York Times

At each venue a red carpet leads the viewer to the assigned seat. And although popcorn is not available, other enjoyments may be. “In some cases,” hints the festival director Holmberg, “it may be possible the filmmaker will be there to present the film.”

By staging one-person viewings in iconic locations, Holmberg hopes to preserve some of the sense of occasion that an in-person festival generates. But here again, the festival organizers are experimenting. “We want to see, how does being alone affect the film experience? What happens when you’re doing nothing besides watching the film?” he said.

Although she will post a daily video diary on a dedicated page of the festival website, Enroth has agreed to eschew all other forms of communication and entertainment — no phone, no books — during her time on Pater Noster. She said that she wasn’t worried about getting lonely, but didn’t rule out the possibility she may “start talking to the furniture.” And, like Holmberg, she was also interested to see how her week on the island changes the experience of watching films. “The first day, it’s just ‘Oh, I’m alone, watching a movie.’ But a few days in, I might be like, ‘OK, these people are my only company. What if I hate them?’” she said.

But for the self-professed science fiction fan (her favorite movie is “The Never Ending Story”), even that will be a welcome escape. “I love watching movies, because it makes me let go of work and everything else that’s going on right now,” Enroth said. “It’ll be great to be surrounded by someone else’s reality.