The good news is that if you pay for Priority Express Overnight they guarantee it will get there when they say it will.

The bad news is, when it doesn’t, you have to wait seven days to file while they hope you’ll forget or lose the receipt or interest and go away.

The good news is that the apricot tree arrived safe and sound.

The bad/good news is, but not till this afternoon, which means I now have to remember where that receipt is (it’s tucked in my Sierra Club Engagement Calendar by the computer to make sure it stays right there and in mind.)

So that splurge of a shipping fee won’t have been after all. If they only refund to the difference between the timing I paid for and what I got, I’m fine with that, but it sounds like the full fee.

It came! She got it!

I am grabbing onto a little sunny Spring here before the new atmospheric river goes Niagara on us Wednesday through next Wednesday.

This was taken four days ago; the oxalis is a solid blanket of blossoms now. They were the first thing I saw when we were house-hunting, absolutely celebratory. Sold.

There was a flock of crows yelling in the air. I looked: nope, they’d picked the neighbor’s overripe persimmons clean weeks ago. Thought so.

To the left, there it was: the hawk they were screaming at, soaring higher than they dared go, but they were making sure it knew they could take him on, for sure, them and their best buddies down here. Go! Shoo!

There were reports from San Jose that the peregrine falcons have begun the countdown towards the eggs to come.

And then of course this guy suddenly showed up. Hadn’t seen one of them in awhile.

Maybe the hawk noted its escape route past the mandarin tree, since rabbits always run for the same exit. Cute little guy. Future raccoon food. Or great-grandparent by August.

Last year there was a rabbit that would dash under the mango, and I’m guessing it chewed on it because the tree’s not been doing so well ever since. Not dead, not growing, no black spots of sickness but not deep green anymore either, not flowering, just sitting there on the edge of the bed deciding whether to wake up along with everybody else.

A little fertilizer for the season’s breakfast and we’ll see if that makes a difference.

You’re their best but also worst nightmare, he told me over dinner.

Me: –?

Basically, he said, because I was a nice person to deal with–but could I imagine having to deal with every.single.plant.sent. individually?

Here’s what happened. You know they would have looked at me funny if I’d said she’s an in-person friend, but she is, and she lives in Oregon now. And she and I wanted to get one of those super-rare super-good apricot seedlings to her.

So I looked up what the rules are, because the last thing I would want is its being confiscated at the state line and destroyed after I’d nurtured and grown it this past year, not to mention the disappointment to her.

Oregon has a long, long list of banned plants you cannot bring in. That’s okay, California does, too–like the gorgeous understory-level mountain laurel that I grew up with that is a silent carrier for the Sudden Oak Death disease that began in the last 30 years or so, and they’ve discovered that the redwoods

I seriously had to stop typing a moment

but it’s true, Sudden Oak Death kills the ever-unkillable towering, majestic redwoods, some of which are older than Jesus’s time. We could lose every one. California has been throwing money at research to solve that and experimenting with tossing antibiotics around tree drip lines.

I’m not about to mess with Oregon’s forests nor crops. There are so many variables added when it’s not just a kernel anymore–I wanted to do this right.

Our county agriculture office seemed a bit bemused that I was so enthusiastic about my particular apricots–and maybe at my willingness to follow the rules? How many people do? But for respect for the redwoods if nothing else, was my point of view. Do unto others. Etc. (Maybe I was atoning for those kernels I did mail the last few years?)

They were certainly willing to help. No, apricots did not show up on the banned list. Soil was, though, and inspection for a long list of diseases was required.

They told me the fee for the phytosanitary inspection. No problem.

They walked me through my part of the forms: I was being an exporter because I was sending it out of the state. Yes write one box and one plant in that one box and how I was going to ship it. (Unspoken: because that’s so not what they usually deal with.)

Then just before I went there I had to carefully take the baby tree out of its pot, get rid of every bit of dirt bigger than the equivalent of a hole left by a size US 8 knitting needle without shredding the roots, wrap them in damp paper and then into a 2 gallon ziplock zipped most of the way for the transportation time, and I was off to San Jose. Across the street from the hazardous waste plant.

One of these things is not like the other…

They had told me they would prepare their form and mail it to me afterwards, shouldn’t take too many days.

Visitors were clearly rare. Signage was sparse. I climbed the steep stairs and went oh okay, there’s where I’m supposed to go.

You call via a wall phone with a number posted by the desk opposite, once you find it, and wait for someone to come out of the locked area.

I did and pulled out my knitting.

A few minutes in, someone came out to use the restroom across the hall. On coming back, she stopped a moment and asked, Was I making a cowl?

The secret word!

She told me with a big smile that she was a knitter, too, and you could just hear the capital in that K.

I told her, I miss Stitches, wondering if she got the reference; she instantly responded, Oh, I do, too! We were in strong agreement that someone had to re-start that business. There were so many of us! Clearly enough to make it worth someone’s while, and with that she headed back through the door I was waiting by, having enjoyed the conversation thoroughly.

I don’t know if that made the difference. I don’t know if word was conveyed by the five other people who went through that door in that time that I would not be antsy at the wait, to say the least.

All I know is that a new person came out that door, inspected my plant with its roots dangling nakedly in her hands and healthy as could be, she made me wait awhile again–and then chucked that thought, opened the door again, and invited me back there while she finished the form and double-checked with me on the name and address it was to go to.

I paid. I was done. It was done. I was free to mail it, just make sure that paperwork is inside because it could be opened at any point along the way and checked for that phytosanitary report and certificate.

I had been saving a long narrow box and the cushioning for it since Christmas.

Between yesterday’s full dormancy and this afternoon’s 64F, it had started to show the first tiny signs of spring and it could not safely spend three days in the dark.

They promise me it will be in Portland tomorrow.

Bonne Noel!

Photo from yesterday, actually, but I’m out of daylight. Side edges to be added later.

The other thing I did yesterday was to go to the Social Security office.

I officially changed to my married name with them years ago but the IRS never got the memo. Social Security always had it right, at least, and I no longer had to worry about the state refusing to cash the check for my driver’s license renewal. (Checks. Boy that *was* awhile ago.)

It finally tripped me up again. The Boomerbenefits.com person told me the only thing for it was to take my documents back to their office and walk it through.

The Social Security people told me to take the taxes under my full name problem to the IRS office, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Given Jean’s funeral, I went in the afternoon, a little afraid they would close promptly at 4 and kick everybody out who was still waiting. My previous experience had been back when W Bush signed the Patriot Act and messed over millions of women over how official their married names were or not: the databases had to match.

It was hours and hours in a building and part of that town I’d never want to be in again among people who really didn’t want to be there nor work there.

This was closer and much nicer–nothing fancier than a good paint job and decent flooring and no dirt, but what a difference that made, and they were much more efficient. And actively helpful.

But since I didn’t have an appointment there was still about a 75 minute wait. I pulled out my purple cowl project.

A woman about my age (I can just see her smiling on reading that) walked in, saw how closely placed the connected chairs were, saw that there were only a few individual seats here and there but it was all definitely going to be too close to strangers, and hesitated and nearly walked out.

I smiled, “I don’t bite,” and she chuckled, looked relieved, and sat down next to me.

We made friends on the spot.

Turns out she’d always wanted to knit or crochet. She had even bought a crochet kit for–I think she said a sweater project?–and she’d tried a few times to teach herself how to do it, but it seemed too much to master all at once and it had sat there for years.

I told her, sometimes you need to simply start with something else, maybe something smaller, and then come back to it.

She looked at me. And the small, make-time-useful portable project in my hands. Yes. Yes, that made a lot of sense, thanks.

Eventually they called my number, they called her number, and that was that.

I walked out of there regretting that I hadn’t offered her my name or email so that she could ask any questions or get help getting started; it was the crocheting that had stopped me from offering, it’s been so long I’d be looking at YouTube videos myself.

On thinking about it later I realized the difference would be that I only need to refresh the memory on what term goes with what and the rest would come right back to me.

I did mention to her that I’d found knitting easier on the hands.

The SS office’s website had warned that there was very little parking but I’d pulled in going, Four spaces?! There are only four spaces?! How does that work!

Turns out the rest of them were on the far side of the building, y’know, where I ended up finding the front door, too. Oh.

And so as I was wishing I could ever see her again, walking along the outside of what I now knew to be Windows 5-12 inside, a small red car about the age of my Prius slowed down.

And there she was, waving hello, glad to see me again, too. My face totally lit up and so did hers.

I really hope she gets her sweater and her new skills she’s long dreamed of. I think the chances just went way up.

People who grew up here. People whom I hadn’t seen in twenty, even thirty years and probably won’t ever again. A guy I dated briefly in college. (“Wally.” He looked behind him and didn’t see anyone he recognized. I pulled my face mask down, said his full name this time, and he exclaimed, Alison!”) My kids’ old middle school art teacher, long retired. My daughter-in-law’s dad and uncle, who grew up here, and her brother–we surprised each other.

Jim flew in, too, and played the organ. Ruth Ann flew in and played her violin: friends of Jean in her later decades. The chapel’s folding doors at the back were opened to make room for the overflow of people celebrating 98 years so lovingly spent.

The friend doing chemo for Stage 4 whom I thought didn’t come out in public anymore sat a few seats down from me: this, she had to be there for. She had grown up here and never left and people she knew came and what a reunion it was.

I mentioned to Wally that her brother had married someone I grew up with in Maryland. He liked that.

And of course, wait for it, there it was: the toddler great-grandchild who started to pitch a fit at the front and his mom reluctantly started hauling him out of there. A vivid orange octopus with eight i-cord-knitted tentacles and suddenly they were seated next to me near the back and happy and the mom got to hear the rest after all.

The final speaker was one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as he told us more about his beloved mother.

The room was full of people who’d known him as a boy and who get how he’d become someone asked to share the love from Christ with the whole world: it was his mom. Pearl Harbor survivor, third grade teacher, surrogate loving mother-figure to all.

And his dad, too, gone these many years now. Much was felt and said of his being able to embrace his sweet Jean again at long last.

I bought these bulbs in early Fall of 2000. I will always know when. The bag was a mixture of types and I should have realized they wouldn’t all bloom at the same time for the look I was hoping for, but over time I’ve been just as glad. All these years of mostly drought and a few of heavy winter rains later, they just keep coming up, staggered by both time and its inadvertent spacing rather than a tidy row all at once.

And every year they remind me.

I had so been looking forward to having them blooming along the walkway.

Then my car got rear-ended and slammed into a third car and the world spun around and it wouldn’t stop. Bright and shiny things were RIGHTTHERE at my nose and dull things were far away and my eyes tried to argue but my brain would collapse my left side.

That speeder had taken a lot away from me but he was not going to take away my daffodils. I got down on my knees and with my left hand held onto the ground (held it up, it felt like) that wanted to smack me in the face and with the right hand I dug down and planted. It was frustrating, it was hard, it took a long time, and my brain didn’t know whether to throw up or just cry.

But then there was the satisfaction that I had done it. I had planned it, I had made it happen, I had done the work no matter how hard it was to do and I was going to get to see flowers every spring. Tulip bulbs, I had learned, were total squirrel catnip but daffodils they won’t go near.

My eyes gradually learned how to overrule my brain. Balance is still tactile and visual and a cane is my extra sensory perception mode, my left side still sometimes goes wonky–bump me from behind where I can’t see you coming and we’ll have our own sudden game of Calvinball.

There was the extreme drought year where I got leaves but only a single blossom at the end of the walkway–and it disappeared while we were at church. The then-toddler’s mom laughed with me years later when I told her where he’d absconded with it from.

These were knocked down by Sunday’s huge storm. They picked themselves right back up–not bolt upright but neither are the flowers smacked face down in the mud any more, either. They want to be seen.

While the next patch is getting ready to open up. There will be another bunch after that, and another after that.

They are a forever reminder of the passing of time and how good life has been. Even that was worth it. It has to be, it’s not like I had a choice so it is, but, it actually is.

It helped me learn which way up is.

(I.e, glossy and smooth.)

I’ve now finished the tree nearest the water up there and the fifth one at the end of the row has begun. Slowly, the water is channeling right and towards it.

The sandy areas on the left are from the force of the water coming against that turn before relaxing below.

Do I continue with the apricot (right) and peach (left) look, or do I throw in some red fruit in the next set? Cherries? Purple plums? Or Golden Nugget plums from Andy’s Orchard in yellow. So good!

But then you’d have to explain them all the time. Nah, probably not.

I’ve seen this idea. I’ve thought hey, that would actually be a good idea. And then I’ve forgotten all about it.

Woke up this morning going, maaaan. The Crohn’s? A blockage after eating that bit of sweet potato? (Ding ding ding we probably have a winner. It’s an ostomy thing.) Was it something that should have been thrown out after the power was out for five hours Sunday? But we never opened the freezer, and then last night it was why save the good stuff when Wednesday’s another storm, right?

He said he seemed normal enough.

So it was just me, then, and I hadn’t eaten anything he hadn’t. I spent the day trying not to get dehydrated; by dinner time I chanced a little solid food. It was encouraging, and I should be fine by morning.

So. The good idea?

Take a paper cup. Fill it most of the way with water. Put it in the freezer. Put a small coin on top of the now-ice and add just a few more drops so it stays in place after the cup is put back in the freezer. (Edit: just put it there and the penny’s lower surface immediately freezes in place.)

If you have a power failure, check afterwards to see whether the penny dropped.

Better to toss the chicken than the cookies, but that way you’ll know if you actually need to.

Let’s see if I can kind of splice these two sides together for you.

I am enough further along from this now that the fourth tree in the second row on the right has begun, and there will be a fifth one eight rows above it to give a sense of the hillside.

One of the things about commercial orchards is that rather than hand-prune every single tree in the off-season, they drive machines down the rows that simply flat-top everything.

Here come ol’ Flat Top he come, groovin’ up slowly…

Our average annual rainfall is 12-15″. We got 3″ in two days, and I know the southern part of the state has had it much much worse.

That was the first power failure in memory where it was the oven that I didn’t open for fear of letting the temp escape. The blueberry muffins came out okay enough.

There had been a flash, and then part of the house had power, three rooms did not, and in several rooms, you’d flip the switch, think, well not that one, and then two seconds to, in one case, five minutes later, the light decided to turn on after all.

Except only halfway.

The hallway bathroom looked like it was auditioning for Halloween.

The oven was out.

The microwave could still helpfully offer a timer?

The computers were out.

The fridge was out.

The big freezer in the garage was out, but its temperature alarm was not.

Basically, anything that took a lot of power was cut off, and the house was starting to get cold.

The printer, unasked for, suddenly woke up every ten minutes on the nose and made sounds like it was printing. Bizarre.

And yet, most of the lights were in fact still on. You just couldn’t cook nor access any food that wasn’t shelf-stable–a definite heads-up that we need to buy soup or something and in sizes that won’t have leftovers. Yay for only slightly soggy blueberry muffins.

We looked at the breakers. He flipped some. Then I did, one at a time. The notations for what each goes to was written in pencil 35 years ago by the electrician and there was no way, so it meant turning one off, running inside, seeing what effect if any that had on anything in any room, flipping it back on in the rain and trying the next one as the camphor tree helpfully threw leafy bouquets at us. We were wondering if our wiring had been fried in that flash.

It didn’t seem like a power failure and yet it was acting enough like one that I finally said I would call the city.

City Utilities, said my phone, had a number to call to make a voltage report.

So this was actually a thing?

‘Known problem. 8:30,’ the recording promised.

At 8:37 the lights in the room where I was knitting an afghan row suddenly went out. I didn’t get up to get the flashlight across the room because they were still on in the living room and down the hall when suddenly oops, no they weren’t.

He tells me that means that of the two 110 volt lines going into the house, they cut one and then the other to work on them but for the sake of electronics they should have done both at the same time.

Me, I’m just glad for people who are willing to be out working in that storm with such hazardous wires flailing around them in the winds. To not have to replace a thousand dollars worth of food in the freezer for the second time in a few months.

The heat kicked on as I sat down to write this right after I had my computer back and man, it feels good.

The light in the front entryway refused to be resuscitated. That is a problem I can handle.

—

Update: the official rain monitor went down with the power failure at 3:46 pm and it has not yet been rebooted, so that three inch tally means up till that point.

I kept thinking of her all day that day, and wondered.

Her husband went blind from diabetes. He was on dialysis for years.

My kids were young and my lupus was new.

After reading Norman Cousin’s book, “Anatomy of an Illness,” I decided the author was right, I needed a new creative outlet. The smocked dresses I’d made my little girls–the arthritis meant I couldn’t do those very fine needles anymore.

But then what?

I was at the library with the kids when Kaffe Fassett’s first book about fell off the shelf into my hands. Glorious Knits. Sweaters and coats in dozens of colors (which I’m convinced were the starting point of the painted-yarns industry: all the color work but not the strands to untangle nor the ends to work in.) I hadn’t knit since college and couldn’t do anything like that in a million years but I was sure going to ogle those pictures. Especially the ones at a Dutch amaryllis farm.

Could I knit? With physical therapy help for my hands and big enough needles, yes.

I made a dozen Kaffe Fassett designs over the next few years.

But when I wanted something simpler or portable, having no idea how to do lace, I was making triangle scarves in plain stockinette. They worked up quickly and they were brainless. You didn’t have to haul fifty skeins everywhere. They always fit.

I splurged and bought a little bit of angora at the late great Straw Into Gold in Berkeley.

At church, Jean admired the scarf it quickly turned into.

It took her a long while, but eventually she made me a request.

It was not for a showy Kaffe Fassett, beautiful though those were.

Walter, she told me, couldn’t see–but he could still feel. Would I be willing to knit her a scarf like that? In angora? For him, for her wearing of it, for the softness to comfort him?

How could I not?

Jean, a Pearl Harbor survivor, had family gathered around celebrating her 98th birthday on Wednesday, a few days early. But it was time to be together now.

She quietly slipped away afterward to the waiting love of her life whom she had missed for so very very long.

They are together again. Their joy is so strong even I can feel it.

I finally figured it out. Yes, muscle fatigue plays into my not wanting to keep knitting this for too many hours a day–and yet, after working on it I do want to keep knitting, just something simple.

It isn’t the complexity. I can handle separating and untwisting tangled strands just fine.

It’s that about half the stitches require active decisions on the spot as they make their way across the needles.

I’m finding that the further along it gets, the easier that part is, too, because I can see how it’s coming out and I really do like what I’m doing.

News media: Twelve year old Australian girl cleaning her guinea pig’s cage outside on a summer day suddenly finds her beloved pet being eaten by a snake, screams, grabs the snake’s tail end, and as caught on their security camera swings it around and around and around and around hard at full speed till it lets her guinea pig go (it was fine) as her dad and dogs come running out there.

I’m just picturing the snake’s reaction: Well, that meal took a turn!