A friend of mine who moved here a few years ago posted a picture on Facebook of her toddler reaching up into a thicket of green leaves (her tree looks much younger than mine) for a big, juicy-looking lemon.

The California life. Her relatives back where it’s cold and snowy commented in ways one might imagine, and I was recounting this to Michelle when she got home, telling her my own crack about, “When life gives you lemons, make–”

“–lemon meringue pie!” she grinned.

“Is that an offer?”

And so tomorrow we shall bake.

(Back to Glenn Stewart’s book. His friend was scooping up sleeping pigeons in the dark from city billboards in the early days of the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group to feed the raptors they were trying to nurse back from near-extinction on a nearly-zero budget–and found himself surrounded by a swat team. The man does have a story to tell!)