{"id":31185,"date":"2020-07-25T00:01:44","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T07:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=31185"},"modified":"2020-07-25T00:01:44","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T07:01:44","slug":"shopping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/shopping\/","title":{"rendered":"I Finally Got to Go Shopping. Here’s How That Worked Out. Sheltering at Home Week 19"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"shopping<\/a>
There was nothing I wanted to buy at my local nursery. Why? Because the proprietors had been selling off inventory and were taking their business on line. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

July 24, 2020. Sheltering at Home Week 19<\/strong><\/p>\n

I strode into my neighborhood plant nursery the other day, face mask in place, ready to do some serious shopping.<\/p>\n

But there was nothing I wanted to buy. No iceland poppies. No dahlias. Not even a modest six-pack of pansies.<\/p>\n

I spotted a few half-dead plants in pots. And there was a line-up of pudgy succulents. But that was about it.<\/p>\n

Shopping Soviet-Style<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It reminded me of a shopping trip I took to the GUM store in Moscow<\/a> during the Cold War-Iron Curtain days. I was on a student excursion, and our Soviet minder-guide took us there on a tour.<\/p>\n

I don’t know which was more pathetic — the few lonesome scraps of merchandise on GUM’s mostly bare shelves. Or our young guide’s pride in the stately old building’s paltry offerings.<\/p>\n

\"shopping<\/a>
The aisles were empty of plants and people as my local\u00a0 nursery got ready to shut down.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And now, right here in my own neighborhood, in the affluent U.S. of A., we have a GUM situation. Nothing much for sale in this shady glen on the side of the road. Not because of a state-controlled, top-down economy. But because this was a close-out sale. My favorite nursery was shutting its gates. It was following a trend I’ve come to dread. It was going over to “on-line service.”<\/p>\n

On-line shopping? No way. I am not a virtual shopper. I’m a shopper<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I like to shop when I shop. I like to put my hands on things. Turn them over. Try them on if they are clothes. Take a whiff if they’re petunias. Pick it up and feel its heft if it’s a frying pan. Plop myself down if it’s a sofa.<\/p>\n

Shop.<\/p>\n

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I haven’t gone shopping since — when? February? January? When was my last all-day expedition to Walnut Creek’s newly, expensively remodeled mall at Broadway Plaza? When was my last salad lunch at a Nordstrom cafe<\/a>? My last stroll along Berkeley’s Solano Avenue<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"shopping<\/a>
A few bedraggled plants were still on sale.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, finally, I had my chance. I was headed for an outdoor nursery. I could shop in safety, I thought as I set out from home on the same tank of gas I’d had since April. A short drive. People wearing masks. A little breeze. And something I actually needed — plants.<\/p>\n

I could wander around. Look at stuff. Touch some leaves and stems. Buy something.<\/p>\n

Ron the gardener had cleared a swath of dead-brown California geraniums from our rock garden that morning. And now there was a big patch of dirt waiting for something with chlorophyll to make itself at home amidst the bower vines and Japanese anemones.<\/p>\n

(Also the yellow jackets, a sneaky blackberry vine, and the graceful but over-sized native bracken that sidled into our front yard last winter when I wasn’t looking.)<\/p>\n

Slippers, Yoga Blocks. And — Zinnias?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I haven’t been shopping — really shopping — in months. Jon and I stay out of the stores pretty much. I’ve bought a few things on line: slippers and moisturizers. I ordered yoga blocks once, but the vendor was out of stock and I got my money back.<\/p>\n

Today I was ready for an honest-to-goodness, non-virtual shopping spree. Check out the available stuff. Come home holding something fresh and new and actual in my hands.<\/p>\n

But a half-hour later, I was leaving the nursery empty-handed. And sad.<\/p>\n

Sad because yet another beloved neighborhood merchant was closing its doors. (Our camera shop, our sporting goods store, and our hamburger place had long ago bit the dust.)<\/p>\n

Sad because I miss my kids and my friends and I was counting on a little human non-contact.<\/p>\n

And sad because I just plain wanted to get out of the house and see what the world had to offer. In this case, black-eyed Susans, begonias, zinnias.<\/p>\n

I wanted to take some living, breathing things home with me. I wanted to pop them out of their containers, dig them into that bare spot in our front yard, and enjoy their company.<\/p>\n

I wanted to shop.<\/p>\n

Another shopping story at “Wedding Dress Shopping — When Your Daughter Lets You Tag Along.”<\/a>\u00a0 And here’s one about that same daughter when she was 8-years-old and I took her girdle shopping<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shopping<\/a>
Do I go on line, or do I find myself a new favorite nursery?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"near-empty-store-shelf\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After months of sheltering at home, I got in my car to do some actual brick-and-mortar shopping. A favorite retailer had other plans for me. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,41],"tags":[2179,34,472,82,2324,2325,866,2185],"class_list":["post-31185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-sheltering-at-home-chronicles","tag-coronavirus","tag-dont-miss","tag-garden","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-russia","tag-sheltering-in-place","tag-shopping","tag-social-distancing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}