Celebrating her new job and life with a last dinner out together, not far from the airport.

A woman bussing tables on one side who took up my request, a waiter on the other, two little boys in opposite directions, two finger puppets, and suddenly there were smiles all around and it had clearly made the woman’s day in particular. And the moms’.

And then at the terminal the hug goodbye, and home.

So quiet.

I started in on a large bowl of cherries that had been in the fridge waiting their turn. The fastest way to pit those little ones, given their softness, I’ve found, is just to squish, split, and ptui it out of there by hand, over and over. Pits on a plate, and then when you’re done take the now-empty strainer and pour the pits in to reclaim any juice from them.

(I was going to write squish split splurt but I mentioned that first to my husband and he looked mock-askance at me and pronounced it vaguely obscene.)

Well, the kid’s gone, right? Sour cherries just don’t make her favorite type of pie.

Got those first two pounds into the freezer and needed to sit down a moment.

The kitchen kept calling me back in.

And that is why there are pumpkin honey chocolate chip almond flour muffins in the oven in the time I am typing this. With butter. I can use dairy in things safely again. Man, those smell good.

It never had a name.

It was packed high when her old friend volunteered to come on the long drive south and helped her unpack and then flew home, just so she wouldn’t have to do any of that alone in a town she didn’t know.

It was packed high when she moved north a few years later.

It was again when it took her to Washington State, and back down, and back up, and back down, several times a year as the lockdowns continued. But mostly it had out of state plates during that time.

It was taken through the carwash and made as pretty as its nine years could be before it was taken to the lot today. Carmax: after they’ve looked up its accident history you bring it in and they look it over and they give you a number. Yes or no. Door number one or door number two. Take it and walk.

It is not making the drive to Boston. Cars pay high rent too there.

And so some family looking for a super comfortable, well maintained, reliable, nice, very low mileage (most of it from those trips), nine year old car will have one they’ll enjoy, too.

I met up with her so that she could have a ride home, for the last 24 hours that this is home, in a surprisingly comfortable waiting area while they did all the paperwork for four sets of clients. I would have finished the hat I’d just started but for lack of a second circular needle–I’d considered, then had thought I wouldn’t need it. It wouldn’t be that long. It was.

But that’s okay; I can manage the decreases here.

Both kinds.

At home.

I am so going to miss her and I am so happy for her on her new adventure.

We were not planning on going to see any fireworks, but the fireworks came to us.

Our daughter got in one last visit with her sister before her move to a much longer plane ride away from the neiblings.

Her delayed flight home finally took off about the time it was supposed to land, which meant that we started driving on a crowded freeway at 9:30 p.m. on the Fourth of July for the airport.

Note to self for future reference: one might want to avoid that.

I have never seen so many fireworks in my life. Not only could we see the various cities’ official displays over the Bay (or I could, since I wasn’t driving), cool to have back after they’d been canceled in the worst of the drought and pandemic, but, a little less cool, people were shooting them off like crazy. Everywhere. Nonstop. Next to the freeway. Over the freeway. From behind the wall of the self-storage place over here, the auto body shop over there, in the middle of the trees (!!!) next to the something-star hotel built on what used to be the bad end of that town. We were heading into what looked like a semi-circle of them again and again, and the illegal ones didn’t go very high, either, with the sparks coming right down.

Did their mothers know they were doing this?

Someone’s house on the other side of the Bay caught embers and took fire in the shenanigans but the firemen were reportedly right on it.

One boom shook our car as white sparkles shot upwards right next to us.

Arizona? Nevada? You sure can’t buy them here. That’s a heck of a road trip for a little blow-up-go-sparkleboom.

Reports today were that two people had damaged their hands and dozens of fires had been set off by the more than usual illegal displays.

For us, it was also the distracted drivers swerving all over the place, mile after mile. One guy simply pulled over and watched the shows, which seemed quite reasonable, although, dude–get off the freeway first.

Which, eventually, we did, and hugged our kid home, and everything was fine.

Our friend the patient and her husband got their pie.

Our mutual friends came over and picked cherries to make their own, bringing a much-appreciated gift of chocolate.

And I awoke this morning with the startle of an intense realization that the reason I couldn’t make myself finish the row on that afghan yesterday and just. get. going. was because I’d started the sunflower where a tree was supposed to start soon and that would not do. You don’t pile up motifs in a corner like that. My fingers were waiting for my brain to catch on before I created any more work for them to have to undo.

And now the sunflower has been transplanted to where it belonged all along.

Another baby apricot tree went off today to someone who’s wanted one for a year. That felt good.

P made it home from the hospital but was not up to visitors after the transition, as one would expect. So we polished off the two-day-old cherry pie and I made a fresh one for sharing with her tomorrow, and the fact that there was leftover crust means I just pulled a pumpkin pie out of the oven, too. Variety and all that. A visit or a doorbell ditch or a wait for now–we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Falcon pictures. The ones with the overhead are from the first night, where Soledad landed on the falcon catcher, ie the Rotunda below the main building at City Hall. Today she flew up all the way to the top of the 18-story building, while the boots-on-the-ground crew cheered her on.

Creme Brûlée is not a tall sunflower variety, maybe two feet if that, but it’s sure a pretty one. I expect it’ll be right up there with tomatoes on my must-plant list forevermore.

Meantime, our falcon fledged yesterday and had to endure the indignity today of being rescued next to a pool (update: where she bumped into some glass), being scooped into a produce box, taken up in an elevator, and released on the roof of her native building to start over. Looks like they sprayed her with water to calm her and keep her from immediately taking off in a frenzy of fear at the releasing.

Instead, she looked up at the guy like what the heck are you and what am I expected to do about it?

Someone had fun writing the captions to the video and that’s some pretty impressive camera work there.

But I also want to note, she flew up, well up, on her second day of flying. That’s a really good sign. Even if she got tired and swooped down past the backs of some highly oblivious swimmers.

Got up. Picked sour cherries. Put the bowl standing in a plate with a bit of water in it so that any bugs would freak out and come out but not be able to get out, as I do, and they did, and thus drowned a few I would never have known were in there. Left it there a few hours and never saw a single bug remaining inside the bowl.

We visited P in the hospital, and she looked a lot better than the last time–they have been throwing every anti-viral and anti-bacterial at her, and she needed both.

I did not know that shingles could invite bacteria along the inflammatory path. Not what you want in your brain.

I caught my breath when I saw her half-open her eye for a few seconds; she hasn’t been able to do that for weeks.

We talked about hospital food. “It’s actually pretty good.”

Yeah, we said, Jesse Cool took over the menu just after the last time I got out of here–matter of fact we went to her restaurant for our anniversary dinner a few nights ago. So good. She’s got a Michelin mention these days.

I asked if I could bring her some sour cherry pie next time and she perked right up at that idea. “Yes! Sure!”

I knew her friend from Ukraine passionately loves sour cherries, so I asked her if she would tell them they were welcome to come pick a couple of pounds, a good pie’s worth, and she grinned, picked up her phone and started typing. I told her I’d email the couple, too.

Which I did, and they’re coming over Monday–after the friend has had a day to recover from the vaccinations she just got, because, reasons.

I bet I’m not the only one who brings our friend pie.

Got to the next color change on my project, went looking for what should go there, found it–and…I hadn’t scoured that yarn that day I did all those others. I hanked it, but cleaning the mill oils off was supposed to be the next step. It is now dutifully sitting in hot soapy water. Any dye that’s going to crock, do it now.

Just when it was starting to feel like hey, this is beginning to come out right after all, I have to sit and wait.

So let me distract us with my first-ever homegrown sunflower. Variety: Creme Brûlée.

Oh and? If I ever again decide to do a big intarsia project with doubled yarns, take me aside and just y’know quietly scream AREYOUOUTOFYOURMIND in my ear? And yet, and yet. Not all of them are doubled, and it is so going to be worth it.

Sudden thunderbolt as I type: this thing needs a sunflower! That’s why I bought that orange! Of course it does!

(This was Tuesday’s post that somehow never made it out of draft stage.)

If the third one opened yet, then the opening was facing the density of leaves and I missed it–but it may yet, we’ll see. (Update: it’s taller and bigger but not opened yet.) Monday offered us the second philodendron flower.

Also Monday: a mockingbird grabbed a cherry, flew halfway to where I was sitting on the other side of the window, and kept taking a hard stab at it as if cracking open the pit inside and then leaning its head way back to swallow bits of soft cherry.

(Pro tip, bird: you don’t have to work at it that hard.)

Each time its beak came back up, the cherry came up along with it, arced in the air, and then bounced on the ground. Stab, arc, bounce, stab, arc, bounce.

Today it had clearly learned that it had a new game: it wasn’t eating this time, it was trying to get this red thing to do the superball dance with it again.

But this one was either past its prime or deflated by having already been a meal.

I said bounce! pounced the mocker.

Rollll… (dud)

Bounce!

Okay kinda sorta that time but not really; oomph from the bird, none from the fruit.

I found a lot more cherries on the tree that had been picked and pecked and pickled by the process of having been investigated but not taken.

That’s okay, there are plenty more, and that was just too fun to watch.

He was running late, but at least that would get him past rush hour for the long commute home.

Friends of ours moved far enough away that they were able to buy a house, one with enough land to plant a goodly number of fruit trees, is the plan, after they clear out the neglected overgrowth.

They are really excited about it but didn’t know where to start.

He works nearby, and today was an in-office day and that was perfect: she’d been hoping for one of my apricot seedlings for awhile and it was waiting for her.

He picked my brain while we picked cherries together. You want the squirrels not to devour everything? Plant sour cherries, tart apples, and see the Indian Free peach there? The downside is it needs a pollinator. The good side is that not only are the peaches great, not only is it resistant to leaf curl disease, but the peaches are sour during the growing–right till the very last when at ripening they turn sweet and the squirrels take awhile to catch on that the rejects are the good ones now.

Also: that row of bushes? That’s California coffeeberry, and the tiny fruits are supposedly edible but bland (never tried it) but a big food source for the birds that like to nest in it where they’re protected from the hawks. The Bewick’s wrens take cover in there, and since they are mostly extinct now except in the Bay Area, I’m pretty protective of them.

And then we talked hawks: mine, and their red-tailed family they love to watch. Cool!

Clearly it’s been a good move for them and their young kids, even if I miss them.

I told him Morgan Hill is a hike for them, but if they want to sample the best stone fruit varieties before planting, Andy’s Orchard is absolutely the place to go.

They will be there.

Do me a favor. Please, please. If you can, and you haven’t yet, go get a Shingrix vaccination. The old shingles shot is so much less effective, and the Shingrix one so much more so and with so few complications, that the old one has been taken off the market.

The old one is what my friend had had, and she is back in the hospital today.

I’d never heard of shingles in the brain.

(Late update: they now say en route to, not in the brain. Yay.)

Yeah I should certainly know it by now and I’m sure I do but cellphones make it too easy to just look up someone’s number without thinking about it.

So I typed her name in the search bar and hit the familiar old string of digits.

Now, there are two old friends I wanted to offer cherries off my tree to, and I figured we’d do one tonight and the next in the next day or two as it works out for them and I had decided to call this one first because it’s been the longest since I’d seen her.

The other friend answered that call, to my unspoken astonishment.

I looked back down at my phone: at some point in the past I had thought of the one and typed out the number for the other and I have no idea how long it’s been like that. Huh.

Turns out friend #2 was very much in need of a visit: she is having heart surgery as fast as they can get her meds to the right levels for it. Tomorrow would be good. She had not known she was a heart patient.

We visited while she munched on cherries–“Mmm, those are good!” But not for too long; we didn’t want to wear her out. I had no doubt her husband could use the human time, too, because caretaking and worrying is hard stuff.

Their cat sniffed at and then tried a tentative, ginger step into my upturned wool felt hat on the floor, testing to see if it qualified as a box, and we laughed as she decided that it was actually just too small to curl up in and walked away.

But she had to come back later to try again just to be sure. It was just the right depth and slightly oval and she really wanted to own that new nest. But she was not a small cat. She was our comic relief.

We shared a heartfelt prayer and the sweetest feeling wrapped around us all. So much love.

“Divine intervention,” said Richard when I marveled over that misplaced phone number, and pronounced it again out of sheer gratitude: “Divine intervention.”

Swifts are great, but a well-handwound ball of yarn is its own art form.

I looked to see if there were more yesterday and did not see any.

Today the philodendron flower that had made me want to crack bad jokes about my photo being over exposed wrapped itself demurely back up–and two new buds showed up right behind it. It will be interesting to see if we can get two blooming at once.

Anyone want to try one?

The thought occurs that I could harvest them and freeze them till I find someone braver than I. (Runs to go see if it’s in my “The Fruit Hunters” book of rare delectables. Nope.)

Years ago we put two vivid blue five gallon water containers outside for earthquake emergencies, and since those are not the most beautiful thing to put in your landscaping and you’d want them out of direct sun anyway, we hid them under the leaves of what we affectionately call the man-eating plant growing out of a cut-out in our back patio and under the awning.

I tried to move them out of the way for the camera this time. The first, no problem. The second?

I couldn’t budge it. The plant had grown a leg of trunk right over it and rendered it absolutely immobile. I quite expect it has found a way inside it. Desert plants find their water and make it their own, and this one once drilled a small root right into the house. Got rid of that one and sealed up the hole pronto.

To be continued.

Can you hear me, Major Tom

…For here am I sitting in my tin can

Far below the world

Planet earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do…

–With a prayer for the families of the men lost in the Titan. And all those at sea in the Mediterranean.

Somehow, today my philodendron decided to bloom. This is not something it did the first twenty or maybe even thirty years we lived here.

It sent up a bud a week or two ago (see the shriveled yellowing stalk above and just to the left in the second picture) but that one never opened up. This one did, and its spadix (the peeled banana part) leaned out around noon, following the sun, straightening back up again after its rays moved on past.

The site in that link says the fruit is toxic but that the flower part actually does taste rather like a banana.

Cue the Hey Mikey! Life cereal commercial of my youth: I’m not going to try it, YOU try it! Where’s a Mikey when you need one.

And then I planted some seeds. I hadn’t been planning to, but the phrase, To life! just kept demanding it of me. To life. Know the loss, feel the grief, but honor their memory by never stop looking forward.