Slippery yarn on slippery needles: I ditched that circ at long last and was surprised at what a difference it made in how I feel about working on this. I’m not having to death-grip them every moment for fear of constantly losing stitches, like the 50 off one end while the other end dropped just a few.

My father grew up in Nevada. Ain’t a whole lot of freely growing lush green around there, and he took so much delight in what grew spontaneously in our yard in Maryland: *wild violets! The tiny wild strawberries, the buttercups, (hey, look! Science!) and under the tree canopy, the mountain laurel and the dogwoods. He played suburban dad with the lawnmower and the grass and all that but he and Mom taught us to love what was there. To blow on a dandelion seedhead and watch how it all floated on the breeze rather than freak out at the weed. To know a chickadee from a titmouse. To notice how the grackles were shimmery purple in the sunlight and black in the shade in disguise.

*That link is to an Etsy shop because all the good pictures I could find were from sites that were either telling you how to kill them off or else selling them.