Three weeks ago: hospital.

Two weeks ago: under strict orders not to be on his feet. Church for him by Zoom.

One week ago: still not up to going to church anyway, and that foot stayed propped up under continuing doctor’s orders. Church for him by Zoom.

Today.

Our friend Russ was holding the door open for us as we passed through at the end of the services.

I turned back to appreciate what I’d just seen: the joy in his face at Richard’s not only being there but looking so intensely normal. You wouldn’t have known at all that anything had happened to him. Russ had visited him in the hospital; he knew. Our eyes met.

His “He looks great!” was from the heart and the light in his eyes said it all.

My Frost peach decided to be a good sport about spring, and one can only wonder how different the two resulting peaches would be. (Usually, though, you thin one out when they’re that close together.)

While I was outside, an Oregon Junco flew to the low power line that connects to the house and turned and stared me down. I laughed. It chirped. I walked a little closer (I wanted to get that Frost’s photo.) It let me know I was under orders to get out of its way, stat.

Just then a female junco flew to the tree nearest its intended mate.

She chirped.

He puffed out his chest to make himself look huge and gave her his voice’s best. I wish I could have heard it but I saw, from really quite close.

I was dismissed. More laughing didn’t faze them, nor my going where I wanted to go (gently, slowly.) This was all about each other by now.

So many birds around. What a difference nine days makes. So grateful to the tree crew that took nesting season as seriously as I did and got that rotting Chinese pepper out the very next morning after I’d asked them so that the scrub jays, the only ones that seemed to like that particular tree, could have time to plan.

Great times, great friends, good food, good night.

Six-month retina post-op for me.

The clinic has a white board in every department listing the doctors and how many minutes behind they are, if any. Usually they’re not by much.

But this was a first: someone came through the waiting area announcing that Dr. R was 37 minutes behind–and while holding a large tray full of goodies and asking, Did anyone need water or a snack?

I had never seen this before. I don’t know if those were crackers, cookies, peanuts, or what, but I had just sipped from my own water bottle (I love my five-year-old one) so I smiled a thank you and passed up the chance. But I loved loved loved that Dr. R was making sure those patients out there were okay. That is so him.I looked around the room and remembered the days of gestational diabetes and hypoglycemia and having to carefully monitor intervals and intakes to keep my blood pressure and blood sugar up.

Our president is illegally throwing bombs at the country his grandparents grew up in. He is responding with, in the words of Alex Pretti, Are you okay? While actively making sure we were.

That’s not a new seedling, it’s actual new growth sprouting from a node on last year’s cherry tomato that I’d thought long dead.

So.

I was out checking the tiny bits of green appearing on tree after tree yesterday when movement caught my eye and I looked up.

And there, just flapping down onto the power line, was a Cooper’s hawk in the late sun. I’m a little out of practice so I couldn’t tell you by the size whether it was a male or a female, but it was content to let me stand there thrilled at its presence. So I’m guessing male, since back when we had a pair nesting above the house it was always the male that was curious about those funny humans inside that big windowed box and occasionally outside of it. I would bird watch; it would people watch.

Its mate was far warier.

I wondered how many generations removed this one might be from our inquisitive Coopernicus. The fledgling that hopped through my amaryllis pots some years ago with a parent guarding nearby would be getting old now.

It was just so good to see a hawk in my yard again.

Stop! What are you doing!

The doctor said to scrub the dead skin off.

(This is after finally finally having his foot unbandaged and free to wash up at home now without risking contaminating adjacent parts.)

You’re drawing blood! (Thinking, let’s not not not do those seven months over.)

Well yeah it’s a little red, I was scrubbing.

No! You’re bleeding. Look. You cannot do it that hard.

(Oh.) I can’t feel anything…

Right. That’s why you let me do it.

(Racks for discouraging small footsteps and gnaw marks.)

You know, I told him, planting that tree–we were just following the Biblical admonition.

He looked at me, wondering where this was taking him…

You know: Blessed are the peachmakers!

An old favorite deserves a re-mention on this date. Per the late, great comic artist Richard Thompson:

March comes in on clumsy feet

Kicks the trashcans down the street

Spills some garbage on the lawn

Blows the rest to hellandgone

Knocks the branches off the trees

Gives the power lines a squeeze,

And then March leaves and as it goes

The sun comes out. Then it snows.

Well, that was hellacious news to wake up to. Felon47 wanted a war of his own? Those Epstein files are cutting awfully close.

Writing the rest of this in hopes that someone finds it who’s facing doing this process and hasn’t ever yet: if I can, you can.

After he spent nine days in the hospital on IV antibiotics, it’s been a week of two and a half hour at-home infusions at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and a different one at 2:30 p.m. that takes five minutes per stopwatch to slowly go in but then it’s in, all three requiring I take the med out of the fridge an hour beforehand. Timers are our friend. We both got taught how to do this so that between us we wouldn’t forget any steps on what was at first a highly unfamiliar and uncomfortable process.

Don’t touch the blue part! (He was carefully holding only the bottom of it.)

I am so you won’t pull on it. (There being a needle at the far end for him.)

So, with some hovering mid-air between us, I screwed the other piece on without touching the blue it was screwing onto. It worked. Alcohol wipe, saline infusion, alcohol wipe, med, then alcohol wipe, saline, plastic cap. Oh yeah and the open/close the valves part: if it’s not going in, that’s where it went wrong. The number of valves varied. If it’s only almost not going in, that’s the stopwatch med, it wants to make you go as slow as you’re supposed to with a full minute between partial pushes and that timer is absolutely necessary.

The one thing I don’t get, though, is going through all the steps to completely disinfect my hands and then grabbing a paper towel to dry them. In college I had a job on an assembly line for *plastic medical goods and I saw how that place was run, FDA cleanliness regulations or no. (I would have reported them, had I been able to figure out how back then when a simple phone call to the East Coast could cost you a day’s wages, or figure out how to even get that number. Today’s generations have no idea how much better their world is because my parents’ peers broke up the monopoly of Ma Bell.)

So. A paper towel as a germ-secure tool? Seriously? But then after the antiseptic and the towel they have you Purell and shake, no towel. Well alright then.

The last IV is about done and the fridge has officially reclaimed its space for food. Unscrew, alcohol wipe, cap it off and we’re done. The PCC line allegedly comes out Monday morning, but we’ll know for sure after the doctor sees that foot.

Baby steps.

* Let me hasten back to add that those were not items along the lines of these syringes, they were larger plastic items used in hospitals, like barf bowls. Still.

Found this little guy going from blueberry flower to blueberry flower.

The Stella cherry looks raptor-footed. And here’s the Santa Rosa plum.

The flowers on the Babcock are so different from the others, the punk rockers of the peach world in their spikes of pink.

And in the where did *you* come from department, Wednesday evening I found a small forgotten pot left where the winter rains helpfully dripped off the roof and inside was an apricot that had had what I think of as first year syndrome–where they barely come up and then look dead and you think well that was that. And then the second year they suddenly take off like crazy. I didn’t plant any Anya kernels this year but here it is anyway; all I could guess was that someone out there needs their apricot tree and if I wasn’t going to grow one well then it would just have to grow itself from last year.

I moved it into this somewhat larger pot and it went from tiny scrunched up leaves to three distinct branches and more and much bigger leaves in two days. I could see the difference between morning and evening both days.

It’s going to need a bigger pot, fast. Cool!

Part of me is quite sorry–any tree gone is a loss. Most of me is relieved. It was an invasive planted who knows by whom in the wrong spot. The deed is done.

Turns out the core of the trunk was in very bad shape, crumbling to nothing, with the damage radiating out to the edges in a few places. We may well have dodged more than we knew.

The baby peach tree is going to do great there.

It came late afternoon yesterday. I plunked it in a pot with good soil and watered it and quick got dinner done and then went outside in the now-dark to take its picture. My phone said, Hold it steady…

The tree guy came today to give me a quote. He asked if I was in a hurry. I said I hoped to get it done before nesting season is underway.

And so the highly invasive Chinese pepper tree, the kids’ old climbing tree whose crotch is far too high now to get a foothold into and whose sticky sharp bark would shred a kid’s clothes in trying–as it did back then–and whose roots are doing damage, is going away tomorrow. It is less than my arm’s reach from the house. Its branches hang over it, a fire hazard that could get our insurance canceled. It’s time.

The new Kit Donnell peach will take its place. Far enough away from the fence. Far enough away from the house. Not too close to the fig. The arborist and I considered the thing and then marked the spot with a large rock.

We will have a living reminder of all those incredible peaches that Andy Mariani sold us of the variety that he and his late friend Kit created: the ones that were the most worth all of those drives to Morgan Hill and back on all those beautiful summer days.

They’ll be here now.

(Can you just hear the squirrels rubbing their paws in glee and going, Oh, it is ON!)

Still randomly laughing. He didn’t say, but I bet his wife had thoughts on the subject…

Last week I offered the surgeon his choice of a few hats. Another one was on my needles just then–he knew I’d made them.

He hesitated and his face looked as if I’d put him on the spot so I assured him, You don’t have to. It took him a moment but okay, he found a shades-of-brown Rios one and let me give it to him.

And I thought to myself, You’re thinking skiing and Tahoe and adequate warmth and I’m sure you do have some synthetic thing more windproof than these. No sweat. The irony is that the one he did take was the least warm of them–although, the easiest to tuck away.

Today was a post-op follow-up and I’m the one driving at the moment.

I almost laughed (don’t, don’t, I didn’t) when the guy near the end stopped and turned away from inspecting stitches to me and asked me about his new hat. With quite a bit of enthusiasm. He told me how much he loved it. How he keeps it in his pocket (which he patted.) It was so soft! Was it wool? ..Merino? (Said hesitatingly, apparently unsure that I would know what merino meant. Oh you sweet summer child.)

I told him yes, merino, that it was super wash treated so you could run it through the laundry but it would fuzz out so if you don’t want that then hand wash, and that it was hand dyed (let’s not get into the granularity of kettle dyeing descriptions.)

He very much appreciated it.

And I so wanted to tell his wife thank you. Still laughing. He’s a quick and willing study, for sure.

USPS said last Thursday that my package from Colourmart had arrived in the US.

And then it vanished off the pending list.

I went to look up the tracking number…

Till it dawned on me that everybody on the east coast reading this is smacking their forehead and looking out at the multiple feet of snow and thinking how-did-you-think-it-was-going-anywhere thoughts. (Sorry.)

So I finished the hospital Piuma cowl just to prove I was ready when it’s ready, even though (looking at the queue) I’m clearly not.

Stay warm, you guys.

Years ago, I was doing Stitches West via wheelchair.

I had inherited a wheelchair pressure cushion (something like this only I think heavier duty) from a late friend and it was so comfortable that I ended up commandeering it for my knitting perch. I’ve had it about 25 years now. It has lasted.

So. Friends drove, we carpooled, and at the end of the day putting all that back into their car I heard something.

What. Is. That. Sound.

Oh, we heard that ever since this morning, they said, we just didn’t know what or where it was.

Turns out the nozzle had somehow come slightly open: the entire joyous day of running into old knitting friends and fondling new yarns, my seat had been playing whoopee cushion.

It flattened out about a month ago and Richard could use it right now so a friend came by with a bicycle pump today and we got it nice and full and it seems to be holding just fine and I guess I just knocked it loose again while rummaging around for something. Yay. But it takes me straight back to that bemused, feigned-nonchalance answer from my friend. Just before my disbelief and then our all cracking up.

But my story has been completely outdone.

Richard’s first night in the hospital, they looked at this 6’8″ guy with the operated-on foot in this normal-person bed and went, nope, and moved him down the hall to a bigger one. Still a tad short but better.

Friday, someone decided this just wouldn’t do when they did in fact have one longer than that, so while he was walking the hall with the nurse they moved that one into his room. Great.

Except.

By the next morning, after I’d started timing the (insert definitive expletive of one’s choice) thing, he’d figured it out: it was an air mattress. There had to be some small leak somewhere. That steady jackhammer-loud blast that went off for 50 seconds out of every five minutes round the clock?

So. Loud.

That was the sound of its compressor helpfully pumping it back up.