Will Covid-19 Change Shopping Habits?

 

Covid-19 is still with us as Spring advances and may be here for the summer and into the fall of 2021.  One step that is taken to mitigate the spread of the virus, the lockdown of retail businesses, is changing the way we shop in the present and may well change our shopping habits into the future. Under lockdown, the consumer can no longer wander from store to store, from display to display, freely examining wares on racks and tables, able to test for feel, for weight, for quality.

While lockdowns are in effect, stores may be closed, but the urge to shop remains.  To assuage the desire to shop for things we need or things we think we need, shoppers turn to catalogues, printed catalogues mailed out by retailers or catalogues on internet shopping sites.  These alternatives to shopping in person display merchandise with coloured photographs and colourful descriptions.  Once we’ve made our decision and paid for our purchases, the merchandise we’ve chosen is shipped to our homes or prepared and made available for curbside pickup.   This year I did most of my Christmas shopping online.  Waiting for parcels to arrive was almost like Christmas itself. 

Those catalogues both print and digital can offer the shopper as much and even more choice than a regular retail outlet in a shopping mall.  Goods displayed by internet super sellers such as Amazon or eBay show items from many individual retailers, big and small, from all over the world.  Amazon doesn’t stock those thousands of items it displays for sale; it is merely the go-between, an agent connecting smaller businesses to customers.

The razor I bought for hubby this Christmas was offered on Etsy, another online catalogue like Amazon, based in Ireland.  Although my sale went through Etsy, the order was filled and shipped by a small retailer in Australia!  The wooden blocks we chose for our great grandson came from a family business operating out of their home in Indiana who market the products they make under the umbrella of another super seller.

Catalog purchases are shipped by post or by an army of carriers.  Residential streets are busy with vans and trucks delivering wares to families who have done their shopping online, or by telephone or by mail.  Items we have ordered arrive on our doorsteps a few days or weeks later.  Shopping was never so easy nor so comfortable.

Even restaurant service has been altered because of Covid. During lockdowns, dine-in eating is discouraged or, in some cases, downright banned.   Some food outlets such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and fish-and-chip stores fit easily into a walk-in, take-out mode.  Many other restaurants, copying the practice of pizza shops, are offering meals by pick up or home delivery through one or another of the many delivery services such as Skip The Dishes.   

Will the phenomenon of at-home shopping during Covid close-downs become the way we shop, Covid or not?  Perhaps future restaurants will look more like pizza outlets with large preparation areas, but little or no seating.  Take-out and delivery will replace sit-in eating.   Dining in a restaurant will occur on special occasions only in one of the few special restaurants that still offer gracious, seated dining including tablecloths and napkins.   Cloth napkins and serving dishes will be forever gone; paper napkins and boxes both cardboard and aluminum with be de rigueur whenever we take out to eat at home.

Online shopping, popular because of retail closures, may outlast the Covid 19 virus. In our future, large retail outlets like Ikea and the Bay might reduce their costly in-store shopping space and sell mainly by catalogue.

Catalogue shopping is not new – Remember the great Eaton’s catalogue in days gone by? Many an afternoon could be spent browsing through the catalogue and dreaming of this and that. Catalogues, those dream books that came from Eaton’s, Simpsons, and Sears, serviced all those who lived on farms or in rural communities and invaded the urban market, too.

The glossy pages of those catalogues of yore were full of lovely pictures and creative descriptions designed to give the shopper good information about every article sold in the main stores and more. Little girls could giggle over the pages selling corsets and stays and little boys over ladies in girdles.  Ordering anything from cream separators to soup spoons could be done by mail or by phone to a main centre.  Alternatively, orders could be placed in one of the many small store-front catalogue sites in every small town and picked up from the same little space. The great catalogues of the early 20th  century gave rural folk a place to shop that was varied and complete.  Even city folk used catalogues on occasion and had their dreams arrive by one of a fleet of delivery trucks owned by emporiums such as Eaton's.  “Mom! Eaton’s truck is here,” could be heard up and down city streets.

Gardeners whether urban or rural have been shopping from seed catalogues for well over 100 years.  Renny Seeds out of Toronto mailed catalogues upon request to homes across the land as early as 1800.  In 2021, gardeners continue to shop for seeds and plants, and for supplies such as fertilizers and other soil amendments offered in the seed catalogues of Thompson and Morgan, McFadden’s, Dominion Seed House, Ontario Seed Company, Burpee and many more.

Sometime before Christmas, seed catalogues are mailed to customers or made available on the seed company's website, and the dreams and plans of next year’s garden begin.  By February, the catalogues have been perused several times, and gardeners have drawn up garden plans and know exactly what they want.  Orders for items in the catalogue can still be placed by mailing in an order form enclosed with the catalogue or by telephone reading each item with its catalogue number and name.  Now, orders can also be placed online on interactive web pages.  No matter what mode your order took, it arrives directly from the seed company to your doorstep.

Catalogue shopping for wares other than gardening is undergoing a rebirth in urban, as well as rural homes.  Large malls may never be the same.  Some retail stores will be able to ride out the Covid storm and revert to in-person shopping as before Covid—but many will choose to stay on as online businesses. We may not see a resurgence of printed catalogues but online catalogues are burgeoning.  We may be entering a new era for shopping – choosing to shop from online catalogues instead of shopping in person.

Covid-19 restrictions may permanently alter our purchasing habits.

 

Crane Flies

Found: 1 crane fly adult.  Isn’t it a beautiful insect?  The wings are so lovely and the legs so long.  The adult doesn’t give you a clue about the damage the larvae can do.  Crane fly larvae eat the roots of plants and can damage lawns significantly when they are present in large numbers. 

I have just a spot or two of turf grass left so the appetites of crane fly larvae do not bother me. 

When Winter Wanes

Last year's leaves and this year's start.

When Winter wanes
And days grow longer,
When snow drifts melt
From sun much stronger,
I put an end to Winter’s rest
And wander from my comfy nest
Into the garden still brown, cold,
To hunt for shoots hardy, bold,
Drawn up by an ever-increasing sun
That tells of Winter quite undone.

Smith

My little book is finally published.  I say "finally" because the concept has be running around in my head for many years.  The book is about a week in the life of Kate Anderson and an itinerant yard worker called Smith. 

Kate has recently retired and at odds with who she is and what she should be doing.   During the week, Smith introduces Kate to some quotes of Lao Tzu.  These quotes help Kate overcome her feelings about retirement. 

At the end of the week, Kate's garden is improved and Kate has a new look on life.  If you'd like to buy the book you can here: Smith

Native and Guests

Gardening with all natives is, to some, a goal.  For me, I like the diversity of having a few natives, a few aliens, some polite plants and some self-centred barbarians, some short and some tall.

My pet invasive is Queen Anne's Lace.  It mixes so well with others.  Look at it with daylilies and coneflowers.  Could anything be better? 

Of course, I weed out what I don't want.

This is my boulevard right now.  The small yellow at the right side is coreopsis.

Isn't the orange of the daylily great? 

George Baker

mother clump of Corydalis solida

It's truly Spring; George Baker is blooming.  My George Baker (Corydalis solida) has been a sign of spring for over 10 years.  Each spring without fail, the little clump has brightened a side garden, a shady side garden, with its lovely salmon pink blooms, the first bit of colour in April. 

George Baker is a Spring ephemeral, blooming in April and gone by July. Its goal is to bloom before the deciduous trees fully leaf out.  Because most ephemerals completely disappear before summer, their location in your garden needs to be marked to avoid disturbing them during summer or fall maintenance.

Two more ephemerals that deck out my garden in early spring are Trilliums and Dodecatheon meadia, Shooting Stars.  The Trilliums are a "borrowed" clump my son-in-law brought me from Kempenfelt Centre south of Barrie many years ago.  The original clump has now been divided to become three clumps of wild Trilliums. The Dodecatheon I bought at a native plant nursery and is another plant I've had for many years.  I've moved it several times and it still keeps blooming, its little badminton bird flowers sprouting bravely above the plant. Spring ephemerals face the April cold and wind with a message that Spring is indeed here.  (See the May 2015 post for more about ephemerals.)

For a long time, George Baker stayed as a neat little clump.  A couple of years ago, the plant decided to multiply. First there was one little pink clump about two feet away, then one more clump but with mauve flowers.  Now little George Bakers dot the garden in an area of about 4 feet around the mother plant,  one or two a fair distance away and some adorning my neighbour's yard along the fence line.  Some are big enough to bloom; others too tiny just yet. Perhaps George Baker will become as invasive as its relative the perennial Corydalis ochroleuca  that pops up all summer over one area of the garden and reseeds itself with abandon.

I'll not worry -- George Baker delights me and only lasts for a few weeks.  Let it bloom where it will.

Staying In Canada

No southern sojourn for us this winter.  For 10 years we've hidden from winter under a Floridian sun, done our duty at Floridian golf courses, and commiserated with non-travelling relatives and friends about the snowy weather predictions from home.  This year is different.  For whatever reason -- the drive, the drop in the dollar, the political climate or perhaps some other subconscious factor -- we both decided to stay home, to spend the entire winter in Canada.

A year in Canada is not reminiscent of a Year in Tuscany!  In Canada we have the usual seasons: Winter from December 1 to February 28, Spring from March 1 to May 31 and so on, but that's not the whole story.  We also have weather, capricious and fickle weather, disobedient of seasonal rules, pouncing on the countryside with little warning. Weather is shirtsleeves in February and parkas in April.

Our weather most often comes from away, eastward from the prairies, down from the Arctic or up from the Southern USA, bringing rain, or snow or sun to Ontario on its way to the East Coast.  It's the dip in the Gulf Stream, the cyclone in the Pacific, or the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico pushing temperature changes and precipitation across North America.

Last night we had weather, cold weather, cold enough to freeze fingers and toes, a cold so penetrating that walkers hurried hunched against the freeze to home or work, to warmth.  Along with the cold came a blizzard, an all-night snow blowing horizontally and creating great drifts across the city and down the streets.  This morning the city was laden with new snow, drifted over, reference points disappearing in an all-white landscape, leaving no division for roads or sidewalks. Snowblowers were out in full force as drivers rescued cars from filled-in driveways.  Drivers who had already found their cars and freed them from their snow-cover were on their way to work, slipping and skidding down unplowed side streets like beetles in soap suds.

Our city does a good job of plowing our streets, but the order of plowing is main streets first and side streets later.  It usually happens that our side street is plowed in mid-morning, after the driveways have been cleared and drivers have left for work. The plow races down the street pushing road snow into mounds at the ends of freshly-shovelled driveways. When residents return home from work they need to tackle snow again -- road snow.   Road snow is different from blizzard snow, crusty mounds of road snow deposited by the plow, hard packed and turned to ice by traffic, mounds filling the bottom of driveways, mounds almost unmanageable for a snowblower,  mounds that, if not moved, may last until spring.

Keeping the driveway cleared may be the chore that sends most Canadians south, but when you're retired and possess a snowblower, a snowblower that starts in all weathers, a snowblower that moves itself on treads, a snowblower that blows snow well into the next yard, the snow really isn't such a big problem.  The urgency is missing.  Retirees can wait at least until the plow goes by or even longer.  Snow clearing can wait and be done at leisure and in fits and starts.

Those without snowblowers will find a myriad of people who will "do snow" for a price.  My neighbour hires a person who arrives after each snow with a humongous snowblower attached to a tractor.  He can clear her driveway, even the mounds from the plow, in less than five minutes. We haven't taken that option yet, but it's there.

I must mention that I don't do snow anymore, neither making snow angels nor shovelling it.  In our household we have an agreed-upon division of labour.  Mike valiantly keeps the sidewalk and driveway cleared while I cocoon and dream of seedlings and Spring.  Seems fair to me.