So very good to have our daughter home for a visit. So good.

We even shared our anniversary-celebration Dandelion hot chocolate mix with her. She surprised us back with chocolate from–Dandelion. Well there you go. Raised that one right.

A friend’s milestone birthday celebration and an arriving plane that was four hours late and so was the hour and nothing got written last night.

Got so caught up in doing the Two Sides of the Sea puzzle again that the time caught us by surprise. G’night.

It is, it’s a Sandra Boynton creation, and very funny.

Continental drifts of words reversing to Pangea form, glacially.

I do think we need to call it a night, though, hon.

I knew Andy’s Orchard sells at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market down south, which caters to top-tier chefs.

What I didn’t know is that Ken’s mom whom I wrote about last night discovered Andy’s there and loves his stone fruits as much as I do. She told me that out of all the vendors, there was just one who had a line fifty people long and she had to find out why. The rest is history. But she and her husband have since moved away.

I told her we’d driven past his freeway exit yesterday and since he’s not far from it, had almost talked ourselves into stopping. We just weren’t sure we would arrive in time with the traffic, and as it turned out we got there at exactly when we’d hoped to.

Had I had any idea, we would have left sooner and made time for all the peaches and apricots and the last of the cherries that they could have hoped for and for their grandkids.

But at least for any next time, now I know.

Hottest day in the heat wave, the Saturday after the Fourth of July, thirty-five degrees cooler at the beach than inland, where are you gonna go. Right?

Except it happened to be the day of a family get-together with a cousin who actually lives near the beach. Otherwise we would never ever…

Much Waze and Googlemaps checking ensued.

Ken’s brother later exclaimed, Four hours forty-five minutes?! (For an 83 mile route.) You could walk it backwards!

Which made me laugh, and no we didn’t take that route, and it was a 6 pm event so we left late enough that most people who wanted to spend the day at the beach were already there (or trying to be) so the extra 45 minutes wasn’t too bad.

The dinner was outside, but at 7 and under the shade of a huge oak so I pulled up a chair.

Cousin-in-law Ken’s mom, who lives in Arizona, sat down next to me to catch up a bit. There are only so many weddings and baptisms and the like to get to do that.

That close to the ocean and in the thick fog and breeze it was getting cold. I’d grabbed a silk cowl on my way out the door with the fleeting thought of, since anyone can wear silk (well yes it matches my blouse?)

It matched her dress even better, and she was quite grateful for the rescue. It is amazing how much warmth something around your neck can add. (It’s the Fettucia tubular silk in that link in blue, bought at a half off sale, just so she doesn’t worry about that price tag if she sees this.)

When it was time to go I told her, When am I ever again going to have a chance to totally match your outfit? It’s for you. Loosely spun silk has a tendency to stretch over time, so it may, just so you know.

Richard wanted to go before the two hour trek home (reverse beach traffic ended up demonstrating that it was a thing) so we didn’t linger too long from there. But I’m so glad for those limited times that she and I have had.

And eight-year-old Caleb, who was who the day was about in the first place, was celebrated and loved by all.

They are! They’re actually eating the leaves. Goldfinches love sunflower leaves specifically and this site recommends planting them near your veggies as a decoy because you might as well make use of this, right?

They said it mostly happens in California. I have questions.

My phone could see the details my eyes no longer can, and upon embiggening that’s exactly what those two birds were.

But I like my sunflowers… So I took a bit of bright pinkish-red thick yarn and tied it around the upper stalk of the one they were going after the hardest.

It didn’t take long before I saw another one swooping in–and then whoawhoawhoa!!! it about did a backflip in the air trying not to continue in that direction. Close!

It went to ground. It started eating the weed seeds. The little tiny stabby ones that attack your socks and wedge themselves into the yarn and you can hardly see them but man can you feel them. Hey you guys! Eat those!

Next thing you know we had a small flock doing exactly that.

Postscript: Most cities around here canceled their fireworks, given the intense heatwave and the wildfires already going, but it turns out the ones closest to us were still on. They apparently were moved so as to be completely over the water, which means we could stand in our front yard and see almost everything. Well into it, the kids and mom across the street finally opened the door to ask questions; we called to them to come on over, our place was on enough of a rise that they would see a lot more from here.

They had lived all over the world and then here the past few years and the kids had questions about the Fourth of July. I couldn’t hear much over the booms but Richard gave them a bit of Fort McHenry history.

There was one again! Did you see the sunflower?! Oh that’s so cool!

And then yet another sunflower. YES.

And good memories were made for all.

2.41 lbs.

These are getting to be a habit.

My family can tell you that I have never been a puzzle person. Spectator sport. He loves them, though, and had a great time playing one with his sister when she was in town. I knitted and kept them company.

My friend Holly told me a few years ago about Nautilus wooden puzzles and they have some gorgeous ones; I bought him one for Christmas a year or two ago.

He never touched it.

Who did he think he was, me?

But puzzles are a collective endeavor, he explained.

Two weeks ago they sent me a sale teaser that had this Grand Canyon in it. 253 pieces. Surely even I could manage to put up with that, and our anniversary was coming right up and it seemed the thing.

It takes four hands to hold them together when you move a connected bunch to the edges that he insists must be done first.

I thought the number of pieces meant it was going to be simple. I loved that some of the puzzle pieces looked like wildlife. What I hadn’t thought of was how much my brain was going to resist putting a bear in upside down and stop picturing it as a bear. Or a condor. Or whatever.

It took the two of us two nights, and I was mentally apologizing to my granddaughter for the 25 piece one I sent her from them: puzzles may be her favorite thing and she may be really good at them but four years is just not old enough to handle those wooden parts that don’t click in place but keep sliding around and separating with any movement.

He found a little octopus puzzle he’d bought himself that had no outer edges, just freeform. I contributed a very little. That took him two nights to finish, which surprised us both. Okay, maybe I’m not so bad after all.

I found the older Nautilus. It’s a bay, underwater and overwater, gorgeous, and we started in on it tonight.

I was surprised at how much faster it was going than the canyon.

That’s because you’re better at it, he said.

I guess all I’d had to do all along was to want to try.

44. 65. 66.

Also, another 2.2 lbs of sour cherries (I’m keeping a running tally for the year here where I know where it is) were picked, pitted, and this time baked and we did indeed celebrate.

And so it begins: the brief days that start with an hour of picking/pitting/bagging/labeling/freezing.

These ended up in the fridge all day, mmm, tart cherry pie, but I just couldn’t do it: we had been out of frozen ones and I needed that first bag ready against the winter to come, that sense of getting the work started. One to save, first.

Up to you, he said.

Freezer it is.

Besides, a few more days out there in the sun for the rest and then we will have the perfect reason for a little celebratory baking anyway.

As I flash back to the person who shook our hands in the receiving line in Maryland and told us, Congratulations. You guys picked the hottest day for this date on record.

(Suddenly wondering if that record held….)

I told a few people part of the story. Here’s the rest.

We got front seats on the plane ride home. Nice. But whatever plane model it was, they were the tightest seats we’ve flown.

My 6’8″er likes the aisle seat and I don’t generally have a problem with the middle but after trying it, man; I moved by the window.

But I felt doubtful about having put my knitting in between us (and rightfully so–I know how much tall people need that legroom.) I moved back to the middle a moment so I could lean over and ask and be able to hear the answer: “Is this a full flight?”

The tall African-American attendant had looked even before we sat down like her day had not been going well at all and that she was trying to do her job better than she at all felt like at that particular moment. My annoying seat-taking had clearly not helped. And she was right, a 5’5″er taking two tall seats is a jerk move, even if I was planning to move not only out of the way the second anyone asked for one, but into the hated middle.

She said it was. I stayed in that center seat, resigned to my fate.

What I didn’t hear was that the other flight attendant, a white guy on the short side, had gone, Whaaaat?! It is not!

There is no under-your-feet space there and the overhead bins at the front fill fast. You are limited in what you’re allowed to have on your lap.

I had a book and a small project in a ziplock that also had hand knit finger puppets, which I handed one-by-one to Richard who handed them to the parents of the four small children who came on. Have a great flight!

The attendants saw.

As boarding continued, I was looking for a tall person carrying nothing.

It was nearly over when I spotted the guy: he was an older black man, he was walking with some difficulty, and the backpack he had was being carried on his far arm where I didn’t see it.

Something joyful that I completely didn’t expect seized the moment and I called over, Would you like a seat?!

His face lit up. How had he lucked out like this. YES! I don’t know how to describe it other than it felt like, oh, we finally get to meet each other!

I think I surprised her. The attendant who’d lied to keep me from hogging the window readily helped him with his bag while he sat down, grateful to finally be off his feet.

There was so much love radiating from this good man, whoever he was. By way of conversation he asked if this was our first flight? It was his second.

His English was very good, but the accent and the… I didn’t quite catch which country he had been evacuated from and brought here but he was so grateful for the warm welcome.

I tried to knit but there was simply no space for my arms. I barely managed to hold up my book.

We were in the air now and it was loud and I was deaf. He had a smart phone. He didn’t know how to get it to do what he wanted from mid-flight, and the buckled-in attendants held out their hands for it and we passed it down to them and they connected it and found the movie he wanted to see and again it was a moment where we all came together for him. Welcome welcome welcome. From all of us to all of us and particularly to him.

He transformed our day. He transformed us.

I showed Lillian this picture of my blooming sunflower and she was puzzled.

“Where’s the black?”

I explained that it starts off with lots and lots of tiny green buds at the center that become lots and lots of tiny yellow flowers and those become the seeds and yes they’re going to be black.

Six days later, those flowers look like tiny molds for what is to come.

The Cat in the Hat ends with the query, Well, what would you do if your (grand)mother asked you?

I guess Lillian answered that when she looked at me funny, puzzling why haircuts would be something you’d even think of when you have the next Dr. Seuss in hand and the anticipation of a great read.

So we’ll see if Lillian thinks we’re haircut twins (and whether a not quite five year old can see past the straight hair vs the curls.)

(Didn’t manage to post this before our Uber ride to the airport. Just got off the return ride. Updates later.)