I spent lots of time today winding yarn, going over patterns, debating doing this vs that. It felt great to be planning something interesting.

There are more and more and more apple blossoms. My Fuji tree is nearly 30 years old and last fall was the first time I ever hired a professional arborist and his crew to prune it (and a few others.)

Those guys knew what they were doing. Yes, we had all that rain, but still, not only is it beautifully shaped, I’ve never seen it bloom as much as it is now. Which is what I was hoping for.

P.S. And on a completely different note, as someone whose family did a camping trailer trip across the country and back in 1969 plus many other road trips, man, what we missed out on! An entomologist and his son have created an app to identify the bugs that wipe out on your windshield. Divvy it up, kids, your side vs. Susie’s and see who can win the most splats! A bug in the southeast likes the smell of exhaust pipes for laying eggs. Darwin rules.

Make sure Dad passes on the right, too. You want your fair share.

We talked to the kid whose birthday is today.

Who once did a semester abroad in Paris.

Who stayed in an apartment on the Left Bank.

Who got to see Notre Dame every day.

Who told us, before we saw the latest of today’s news releases, that more had been saved from the fire than they had quite dared to hope.

My niece Emily has been in the ICU: she caught the flu, got worse, started barfing and her (tween? Tell me he’s not a teenager yet?) son called my sister and said, Grammy, Mom needs you.

My sister went over and called an ambulance.

Emily’s kidneys had shut down and things were very very bad.

This afternoon she was moved out of the ICU, where she’s been the past week.

Today she ate solid food for the first time. Some.

She feels–well, she’s definitely had more fun than this.

Everything. Everything. Is looking far better than it did. We can start to breathe again.

Today Mom and Dad told us Dad’s in hospice care now. Dad’s favorite caretaker can still come and that made the decision easy.

This is another of the amaryllises from Dad last fall where the TSA thought the bulb was a bomb.

This is not how I usually photograph them and I wondered why I was doing it this way as I snapped another from the same angle rather than changing it. Why… And then I got out of the sun and put it back on the porch and that was that.

I did not see till I went to post the picture: it was taken looking straight down so that the stem that supports the blossoms is out of direct sight–but you can infer where it held the sunlight within itself by how it left only its shadow to our eyes. But it is real, it is there, it is strong against the winds outside, and there where it cannot directly be seen, it holds the glorious colorwork steady.

A few more days and the whole cherry tree should look like this and more.

For my dad: an Apple Blossom amaryllis started opening today.

The Frost peach has been properly thinned, and so has hours of paperwork and housework that had needed to be out of the way before company comes next week.  Sometimes even the disorganized have to crack down and get to it.

The reward is that I found the bluetooth pendant for connecting my cellphone to my hearing aids–it had fallen behind the computer.

I left the Sunbubble zipped and the Christmas lights and heater on while we flew to see my folks; Richard’s Rube Goldberged auto temp set-up on the lights no longer works, so those would just stay on, but the heater’s would turn it off above 74. I knew the humidity would rise a lot with nobody around to open the greenhouse door by day and I had no idea how hot it would actually get in there. But tropical trees don’t argue with heat, is all I could figure.

When we left it that way for five days over Thanksgiving we came home to black spots on the leaves and a graying and withering away of all new growth, taking away all chance of fruiting from what would have been. Alphonso mangoes do not like humidity. The fruits from last summer held on, though.

It’s warmer now than it was then and boy has it rained (with the irony of, not inside the plastic. I’ve had to water this one tree.)

I didn’t want another disease attack, now that I know my resistant variety is actually somewhat susceptible, but you do what you have to do, and besides, visiting my Dad was vastly more important.

All this in ten days. This is what the new growth looked like as of yesterday that had been just starting in several spots, like the first photo. All those small lower clusters of leaves did not exist yet when we left. New branches on a mango in flush can grow several inches a day, with the leaves reddish as they grow, then light green, then gradually dark and lush, and I knew that, but still, wow.

Heat and increasing sunlight with the season and plain good luck. And suddenly I have a much bigger tree.

As soon as these bud out and start fruiting, those uprights will start curving gracefully downward with the weight. And what would have fruited in November suddenly doesn’t matter.

We ate our first just-for-the-two-of-us mango yesterday, the third from the tree. It was like nothing I could describe and do it justice, but it was very very very good.

There is one last summer 2018 mango turning slowly yellow as this year makes its promises.

We’re having a Cooper’s hawk sighting nearly every day now. Cool.

Another Red Lion amaryllis from my dad–here, the hawk’s gone now, let me give you a close-up. Love love love these. If you have an amaryllis with four or more leaves it should bloom the next year, too.

The ground is so wet that digging a big deep hole and finally planting the Kishu mandarin I got for Christmas was surprisingly very easy. Like pushing a shovel into Play-dough.

If you live in non-citrus-growing areas and wish for a mandarin orange, plant this one in a pot to keep in or out depending on the weather. The tree is small and the fruit is golf ball sized, soft, seedless, and the peel pretty much falls off and you can just pop the whole thing in your mouth just like that. The fruit doesn’t ship well for grocery stores, you have to grow your own.

It ripens months before my Gold Nugget and thus stretches out the season for us. Not to mention it will create more ground-bird nesting habitat out of what was a bare spot.

Today was a perfect spring day and the Sungold cherry tomato that I planted in 2017 burst into even more blooms. Three years!

Note that it was originally set up inside the largest tomato cage I could buy but by now it’s simply carrying it up and away on its shoulders to wherever and there’s no disentangling the thing, all you can do is admire its Leaning Tower of Pisa impression from inside that happy thicket. (Those few dead leaves are from where the freezes got to the outer edges of the plant but it’s made up for it since.)

And to repeat the Red Lion red theme, while listening to two two-hour sessions of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I got ten repeats done on this cowl; I can get one last one out of this skein and then that’s it.

There will be two more sessions tomorrow, so it is time to pick the next project. Baby girl afghan is what I want to do, but I don’t think I have quite the yarn I want for it yet.

There is this other news happening, too.

Dad’s on a lot of oxygen–the machine’s at eight, for those who know how to count such things–but even so, his blood levels sink really low when he gets up and walks around, so while Mom, my husband, and my older siblings (who visited mostly one at a time, other than Sunday night’s pizza dinner) chatted, I found myself going and sitting in front of the TV in the other room with Dad, whose hearing makes it hard for him to follow the conversation in even a small crowd and who needs that chair where he can put his feet up high.

I’ve had my blood oxygen at 70%, setting off the alarm repeatedly in the hospital for a temporary problem. I don’t know how he does it. I am in awe of his perseverance.

The Smithsonian Channel was on a lot, nice and loud for the both of us, and as I quietly knitted I learned a lot of stuff I never knew before about the Egyptian pyramids. Which was pretty cool. Limestone increases in strength with compression but if you tap at it and cut it just exactly so, it slices pretty much straight down. Who knew?

I went through three and a half skeins in those four days.

Dad reached for my hands with a light in his eyes: he had something he wanted to tell me.

“I wanted someone who was intellectual and spiritual,” he said. “I picked your mother for you kids.” He wanted me to know how proud he was of her and how proud he was of us. Of me. Of each one of my kids. He wanted to tell me this and he wanted to say it now, not for the first time, but it was important to him to give voice to all his heart right now.

Mom chose the best, too, Dad. Both of you did, and we thank you for it and we are proud of who you are and grateful for who you helped us to be. We love you.

So much to say, but let me start tonight with the knitting. I’m too tired to stay up and edit this so it’s straight stream of consciousness but I feel like I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I don’t write this down.

I took four balls of Malabrigo with me: one Rios worsted weight, three heavier in Mecha, and picked the slightly orange red with black specks one for the trip there.

Our flight was very delayed, so much so that I cast off just before the plane took off on the runway. So that was done.

I got another hat knitted while sitting quietly with my dad.

The third one got a goodly way along the same way, but then it was time to go.

We got on our plane after sunset tonight, and the flight attendant put a notice on the seat next to us that nobody else was to sit there. What was that about?

Soon an elderly, tiny woman from I’d guess Central America was escorted to that open window seat next to me on the first row, where she didn’t have to walk far.

I had that third Mecha hat in my hands and she sat and quietly watched my hands like a hawk for a long time, but at last adjusted the small pillow she’d brought on and tried to rest.

She missed the attendant offering pretzels, then something to drink; I saved my pretzels for her and tried to get their attention when she woke up.

She went back to watching my hands. The show had changed now: I was into the decreases at the top of the hat. I finished it and turned it so she could see the seven-point star it made at the top.

“It’s beautiful!”

(I may be deaf on a plane but I sure got that one.)

It was bright royal blue–and I had knitted it sitting by my daddy. But that red!

The seatbelt sign was off and I got up and reached into my purse in the overhead and it was right there at the top waiting to be grabbed, a little to my surprise. I sat back down and showed it to her under the light to get the best view of the colors and her whole body exclaimed with the word, “Oooooooh!!!!”

And just like that it was hers.

She was stunned. “For ME?!” She reached for my hands, looking into my eyes and my smile: yes I meant it.

She could have danced. Her eyes certainly did. She reached up to feel it, and when I said it was wool she said, “Wool?” just to make sure she’d gotten it right. She motioned to it and her blouse to show how very very well they matched. She was so happy!

The flight attendant interrupted her with some water; I grabbed the last ball I’d packed, Rios in Ravelry Red, and cast on a lace cowl.

The hats had been stockinette. This was something new. She watched my hands avidly again, right up until the city lights below started getting closer.

I talked to her daughter later as we waited for our luggage, her teenage son with them. They’d been uncertain about having Grandma sitting alone away from them but that’s what there was at that point in boarding.

Turns out her mother told her afterwards that for awhile there she’d had a hard time breathing.

That would have been when she leaned against her pillow and closed her eyes and hoped hard to be okay.

And then I gave her that hat.

That little old lady being wheeled away in a chair owning her second hat now was definitely happily okay now. I don’t even know her name but we are best friends for life.

Sat on the ground two hours while they fixed the plane. Curious: they left the door open for most of that because once it shuts, they said, the countdown begins: two hours and they have to let you get off.

Which means I cast on a hat in the airport, 70 stitches of Mecha on size 7s, and finished it before takeoff. Which was a first.

Landed to new snow here in SLC and a bit of rain working away at it.

It’s good to see the folks.

Two years in on his pulmonary fibrosis.

I’m going to go see my dad tomorrow, so it may be quiet here for a few days.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with one edit: clearly, it’s 92 that is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

An amaryllis my dad gave me for Christmas, celebrating the first day of spring. Thank you, Dad, it’s gorgeous!

When my sister Anne was an art major, there was a semester where she had to choose one article and render it in many mediums. I remember the watercolor the best of all her lobsters.

With thanks to Margo Lynn for the heads-up, now someone has crocheted one: along with a knitted squid, shrimp, smelt, mussels, oysters, scallops, a beaded crab and a side of French fries wearing French berets and sporting the perfect little mustaches. Red i-cord for the tabasco sauce dribbling out. Atlas Obscura had fun with this one.

So here’s what happened: I walked out of the room to get ready for bed two nights ago, expecting him to follow in a moment or two; instead, he called out for me to come back about five minutes later, and as I turned from the hallway into the family room it hit me, too. The sharp smell of burning plastic. It happened that fast.

We unplugged everything around and including the computers, since it seemed to come from that part of the room, and stayed up way late sniffing and looking and touching and trying to track down the source, with fans blowing to clear it out. Which two things kind of defeated each other but. We would step out of the room or outside to refresh our noses and try again. I wished out loud for a trained dog, and we kind of laughed over what our lovable but not overly bright St. Bernard/Mastiff granddog would do. I wondered if we were supposed to call the fire department–but there was no fire for them to come to, yet, anyway, and nothing had a power source anymore.

Last night we plugged in the surge protector and the computers again and gave them a try. Seemed okay. We did not leave them on for the night but at least I got my blog post done in that short time.

With slightly more confidence in those, my computer came back on in the morning, and the idea was that we would plug one new thing at a time back in to try to figure out what was going bad.

I think we’ve found it. The smell was faint but the heat from the thing was not. I’ll feel better when we’ve tested everything but I think that ACDC adaptor was it. If anyone has any words of wisdom on the subject please fill me in.

That whole thing was just really, really close. The smoke alarms (Wikipedia link) did not go off. What if he’d left the room when I did.

I was just talking to Ruth and I thought I’d pass on to the rest of you, too, what a repairman recently told my daughter: if you have a self-cleaning feature on your oven, don’t ever turn it on. The motherboards are not protected well enough from all that heat and that’s the fastest way to kill your appliance.

Given that about fifteen years ago I was quoted $800 just for the motherboard for each oven of my double oven, labor on top of that, I’d say that self-cleaning is a wonderful feature that sells ovens.

And then sells more ovens.