Well folks, "there's a long, long trail a-winding", and it's a steep and stony one at that. None of us knows where it will end, few saw it coming, some of us will falter on the way and may not make it.
But gardeners can take heart from the fact that we're in a good space.
For starters, we're in the open air and when a respiratory virus is on the rampage there's nowhere better to be.
Being out of doors makes me feel happy like nothing else.
There's always something interesting to engage my mind, unlike when I'm in the laundry, even if it's only pulling out a few clumps of purslane or digging out half an acre of couch grass.
Then, all gardening, even of the most languid nature, is exercise and we all know what those boring exercise fanatics say about exercise.
Keeps you healthy, keeps you shapely, keeps your blood pressure down, there's no end to its benefits and the trouble is they're right, a few solid hours of heavy digging, planting or pruning and I'm on top of the world and sleep like a log.
Being out of doors makes me feel happy like nothing else. There's always something interesting to engage my mind, unlike when I'm in the laundry, even if it's only pulling out a few clumps of purslane or digging out half an acre of couch grass.
- Fiona Ogilvie
Another thing gardeners love, if they're honest, is being alone in their gardens.
A huge, massive, mega issue right now is the effect of social isolation on mental health.
Humans are naturally sociable, as are animals as all farmers know, indeed few understood that better than those nasty people who dreamed up punishment by solitary confinement.
But us gardeners love our own company.
Listening to birds and insects and the dog burying a bone under a just-planted pansy, sensing the movement of the sun across the sky and the change in the wind, thinking dreamily of how the garden will look in a few months' time as the season changes.
Most gardeners I know leap at any excuse to self-isolate, potter about at their own speed and work undisturbed.
This is not to undermine the deadly seriousness of what we're facing.
But please, don't be daunted.
If you have a garden you have a place where you belong and something to look forward to, and they are not bad things.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly of all, every garden is beautiful in a unique and special way.
Humans have loved and cherished beauty since the beginning of time.
What better place to find it than in a garden?
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Fiona's ADFAS lecture at Scone on April 7 is cancelled.
The Collectors Plant Fair on March 28-29 at Clarendon has been postponed pending advice from Health Australia; pre-purchased tickets will be honoured.
All Fiona's garden club talks are postponed until further notice.
National Trust (NSW) events are cancelled or postponed until June 30.
For updates on forthcoming garden openings and cancellations, visit www.myopengarden.com.au