Michelle made a dessert with the neighbors’ plums and some star fruit for the occasion.

Meantime, we had one of those afternoons where looking for a tool that hadn’t been used in over a year led to closet cleaning and the non sequitor of this discovery from the early days of my spinning, just waiting to be uncrumpled and admired out of its bag.  Briefly.

I’d splurged on the 50/50 angora/merino fiber at the now-missed Straw Into Gold in Berkeley and had carefully spun up the most luxurious fiber I’d tried yet on my wheel, not knowing that Michelle would prove allergic to it and that I would later be getting angora out of my house.  This was for her big sister.

And it’s…pretty big.  Angora has no sproing to it.  It might fit one of my sons.   But I was looking at it, going, wow. I did spin that fine back then. And really evenly, too, even though I was a rank beginner. Not bad!

Then I took it back out of the breathing space and zipped it back up, a little wistfully.

Meantime, we have two juvenile falcons perched for the night at either end of the louver in view.  They don’t always now, but they did come back tonight.  Curious.  I was surprised by fireworks going off a few hours ago–maybe one of the towns was saving on overtime on traffic control?  Dunno, but I did get to see some of it from my street, crowd-free, once I looked to see what was going on.

Maybe the falcons were boomed out by the noise and headed for the familiarity of home.  It was good to see them.  Happy Fourth of July!

A constant reminder to myself: it doesn’t get finished if you don’t finish it. That half a cast-off row isn’t going to cut it.

Right, right. So there you go.

And while we’re talking about glorious deep rosy reds like that–a return doorbelling, plum jam, a surprised plum-tree-owning neighbor, a protest of “But you didn’t have to do that!”, a response of “But may I?” (And I explained that Michelle had wanted to learn how to make jam, so it was from both of us.)

And then I got invited out to their garden.  Squashes were picked and I was gifted right back again.

My kind of neighbor wars.

Oh, and–they showed me a large leaf, quite shredded; insects, I thought, and a bad case at that. Birds, they corrected me: they’d liked it for their nests. (They clearly thought that was pretty cool, actually.)

So THAT’S where they…! So we talked birds a moment, and when I described my Nuttall’s, they smiled, oh yes, they knew that one. It has really taken to my suet feeder–that’s today’s picture, and I’m hoping it’ll let me get closer and closer.

Meantime, my black squirrel climbed a tree and stared at my being somehow on the wrong side of the fence.  What are you doing over there?!

Speaking of squirrels–my tomato container got dug into, bad, and trying to figure out how to keep the bushy-taileds out, I hit upon this: I took the lid of a plastic spinach box, cut out to the center and wider there for the stem and pushed it down into the pot. Voila! Mulched, sort of, and squirrel free. (Picture taken after the digging and before the sweeping up the mess.)

One of the things about the pot is I can haul it inside when I’m not around to give those squirrels The Look. It is the funniest thing to see one of them stop dead in their tracks and even sometimes turn tail.  You don’t mess with the momma here. You can have sunflower gleanings, but the tomatoes, those are mine.

I’d share them with the neighbors when they ripen but they’ve got their own ahead of me.

Every now and then Facebook helps bring about a moment where you think okay, this site has a lot of faults but this is why I put up with them.

Someone I knew from back in the day casually mentioned a first name of her friend and a moment of their shared history in the context of I don’t even remember what, because I was just sitting there stunned–wait–do you mean..?!  Where do I find…?!  I have wanted for SO long…!

And there she was.  I sent her a note.

Twenty-four years after our younger daughter’s birth I finally got a chance to tell this person my husband and I both so much admired growing up the news that we had named our child after her because we wanted our daughter to be as kind a person as she is.

About time.