Wednesday, we flew in for Richard’s sister’s son’s wedding, got our rental car, and drove to my parents’ for a visit and a late lunch.

And as we sat eating, their phone rang.

It was my sister’s son, calling his grandparents in Salt Lake to let them know that his wife had just had an emergency c-section at seven months along and the baby had been airlifted to Children’s Hospital near them. His wife, meantime, having just had surgery, was going nowhere for the moment. He had a toddler to watch, a wife in one hospital in one city and a baby in intensive care in another where things did not look good.

He was trying to figure out if he needed to ask if he could crash their place from time to time while having no idea how long he’d be having to ask for or how much. The baby had had a mass…

Michelle, meantime, hadn’t joined us for that lunch because she was going to meet up with an old college roommate at a restaurant. The roommate had a toddler and was also seven months pregnant.

Michelle arrived and waited, and waited, and waited, no answer either… And finally just ordered and ate, wondering what on earth was up.

Her old roommate was suddenly in the hospital with no time to call and explain.

She lost her baby.

And so we went off to the rehearsal dinner the next night intensely grateful for the lives of our loved ones and our newly loved ones we were meeting and everybody else’s everywhere, keenly aware of how good it was to see ours. Of the fragility of life. Hugging our grandchildren, cradling Madison to sleep, and looking around at the entire wedding party and thinking, Let the love not be fragile. Ever. We need each other for this.

Saturday, our niece was able to be released from the hospital in time for them to make the drive to Salt Lake, where there was nothing more to be done. The medical staff disconnected their son from the machines and he passed peacefully in his grieving, loving parents’ arms, together.

Saturday, we celebrated Gwyn and Sterling’s wedding in San Jose, and for the second time in two days rejoiced with all our hearts over two people who were so clearly and dearly meant for each other.

It wasn’t till the next day that we got the message that the brother of our sister-in-law had passed while we were flying and celebrating.

There was a knock at the door tonight. It was Michelle, and her hands were too full and she needed help with an enormous, gorgeous floral arrangement she was trying to bring in.

It was left over from Gwyn’s wedding and Nina had asked her to share them with us. I inhaled the orchids: they were perfect and so was the timing. I’d needed that. I exclaimed over the colors and Michelle explained, They’re dyed, Mom.

Okay, somehow that felt just too funny. A moment of comic relief.

To life.

So much to say.

The bride’s father, struggling somewhat with the English, was delighted to find that we had a mutual second language (third for him) but laughed when I said I was deaf in English and French both. (Not quite kidding there in the happy noise of that crowded room.)

The ceremony on Friday was in Spanish. The love was universal–and it was intense. So. Much. Joy., almost as if we humans are almost too small to comprehend and take it all in. It filled everything. If ever there were two people meant for each other it was Derek and Mely.

My friends RobinM and Kunmi in Maryland gifted me some time ago with the surprise of a very generous gift certificate to Purlescence; I wish they could have seen my face or Nathania’s happy anticipation at the shop as I opened that envelope and gasped, stunned, thrilled, trying to take it in.

I got to see that same look and I wish they could have, too.

A few weeks ago, I had in my hands the last skein of the Cascade Epiphany I bought with that gift: a blend of cashmere, silk, and royal baby alpaca, the finest grade, one of the softest yarns in my stash.

And it was red. Slightly on the bluish side. Which *I* like but I dunno… Sometimes it’s an effort, though it shouldn’t be, to let go of working with the yarns that I favor and to use ones the recipient would rather.

Not having met the bride yet at that point, I went combing through Facebook photos. I wasn’t seeing it. But still it felt like nothing else would do–one would think I could reconcile those things, stash, dyepot or yarn store if need be, color choices showing up in pictures, but I couldn’t so I threw the problem in G_d’s hands: please help me get over myself and my love of this yarn I’d been saving the last of for just the right thing if what I’m supposed to be knitting her is something else.

Stubbornly, nothing else was coming to me and that red just felt all the more right. Huh. I didn’t know what the climate was like where the bride was from but I did know she’d be living in a cold one for awhile here and that Epiphany would make a good warm cowl against the skin. And so I knitted it up.

We were some of the first to arrive at the rehearsal dinner Thursday, guessing on the rush hour traffic on the careful side, and so I had a moment to hand the bride a small gift and to tell her, This is for (specifically) *you*.

She was wearing a fabulous dress–and that cowl was an exact match. The tape had come undone off the top of the wrapping (never buy flocked gift paper, it sheds little glitter bits all over everything and it doesn’t stay taped) and she peeked in and gasped. “That is my FAVORITE color!”

Several months ago I knit another warm cowl out of Malabrigo Arroyo. The colorway was beautiful but not really mine; I kept thinking it would look fabulous on someone who was Latina, but whatever, the feeling was that I needed to knit this and I needed to have it ready on a moment’s notice. It’s easier to knit something in happy anticipation of a specific recipient but I had no idea who the who was. Just that it needed to become a thing.

This was before my nephew announced his engagement. Even after, the cowl being finished and put away and forgotten, it didn’t dawn on me.

And I made another one out of silk that didn’t get very long, just a sweet little thing is all; my hands were hurting, the lack of give to the yarn helped not at all, I had no idea why I was making it and at the time I just cast it off and called it done. This was right after the Arroyo.

Last Tuesday I was packing my bags for the trip and wrapping the bride’s cowl in happy anticipation.

At the last second, when everything else was in the suitcase and ready to go, on some impulse I went looking and I found those two forgotten cowls. I found a third–and felt no not that one at all, put it back, and I did. More on that later. But the Arroyo and the silk went into my carryon. I still hadn’t figured out why.

I did very quickly after I met Mely’s family: her mother was a cheerful, sweet, funny woman (I didn’t have to speak the language to enjoy how much laughing went on wherever she was) but she was seeing her daughter off in marriage to a good man–but one who lived on a different continent, as would her daughter now. I can only try to fathom how that would be. She needed a sense of connection to the love all of his family feels for all of hers during the lonely, missing times to come.

Mely had probably shown off her cowl to her mom by the time I opened my purse again at the end of the rehearsal dinner, but I don’t know for sure.

Two cowls.

Her mom exclaimed over the knitting, and her close friend, who had been sitting at our table during the dinner getting to know us a little and who now lives near where the bride and groom will be living and who had played translator quite a few times over the course of the evening, told me something I didn’t quite get about I think the mom’s attempts to learn to knit. I could have gotten that wrong. Whatever, they both appreciated what had gone into the making of those two things.

And then her friend got it and translated what I said again to the mom: Choose. Pick your favorite.

Mely’s mom gasped, stunned. It had not occurred to her! And–! Really?!

She considered a moment, stroking the fabric on the soft Arroyo; she held it close to her face and neck and then holding onto it threw her arms around me. She laughed in delight and put it on. (Not so much on the matching on that one but there are other outfits. Definitely colors that look good on her.)

Her friend, meantime, was wearing a dress that quite matched that bit of silk that I was wishing I had made longer–but it was enough. I turned then, and, picking it up, placed it around the friend’s neck.

Now SHE gasped. “It’s my favorite color!” And it did match her dress.

A very small, almost trivial part of the weekend. And yet. In an evening of love, of changes ahead, of returns shortly to where we live with everything different now, we all felt a little more that we were home among each other.

And that good woman has a tangible reminder of trust that her daughter is well loved where she has landed.

Topped off the day–church, phone calls, Skyping–with an invitation to dessert chez Michelle: a homemade lemon bundt cake with three cups of berries and cherries, and as we waited for it to come out of the oven she cooked and pureed a sauce made out of that much more of the berry mixture and strained the seeds out.

So, so good.

Two weddings 850 miles and 24 hours apart. Got to one dress rehearsal dinner, at least (the one I escalatored my skirt just prior to) but there was no chance on the other.

This afternoon, one bridge over the Bay was closed down for repairs and all traffic rerouted. We’d taken the cheap flight via changing planes in Vegas so as not to have to take the 7 am return and we didn’t have a lot of extra time.

Michelle had opted for the 7 am return–and they canceled the flight on her after she got to the airport.

T h e  T R A F F I C.

Richard’s cellphone rang as we were finally crossing the second bridge: did we want a ride? Phyllis knew we’d be coming in and that we’d be tired.

Yes oh please yes–but–we’re not actually home yet…

We saw some of the wedding party entering the hotel as Phyllis was looking for a parking spot and figured we were good.

I apologized to Nina for my shoes: I hadn’t had time enough to open the suitcase to find the other pair. She laughed for sheer joy of the day.

So much more later, but man, it’s late in the time zone we’re feeling.

Michelle flies out for a wedding tomorrow.

I finished the project for the bride at 9:30 tonight. We just met up with her–and she sent us home with the blueberry crisp she doesn’t have time to finish off. Twist our arms.

“You’ve always liked to garden,” he said today.

“Yes, but I didn’t for years,” I answered, saying that I think it was because having grown up an outdoorsy type and being so sun-confined with my lupus, I think I was afraid that if I broke out of that at all I’d get more and more reckless with it and so I’d kept that side of myself tamped down hard. For years. It was just easier not to have to look too up close at that sense of loss. Years ago, when getting to see my children grow up was a long way off and by no means a sure thing and I was doing everything I could, I suddenly realized one day that I’d just spent six months without even once walking all the way around my own back yard.

Now I feel like I’m reclaiming not just it but me. I deeply need to dig in the dirt and to see life coming forth from it. I picture Parker planting the seeds of all his apples and it just makes my day every time: from my botany-loving Grandfather Jeppson who died before I knew him and yet whom my Dad says I take after to my grandson, a straight line down the ages through every circumstance.

I reminded myself of that conversation with my husband as I went out to put my tomatoes in the ground at 6:00 pm. It was a little early in the evening for May but I had a lot to do. I kept my back to the sun and hey, look! The first actual tomato!

Oops. My critter cover didn’t fit over that tall tomato cage. I need to figure out how to set that wiring around them all, it’s been wrapped too long and wants to sproing inward on itself a little too hard. Might take two sets of hands and Richard was off at a ham radio meeting.

All these tomato plants were planted at the same time in the same seed starter kit. Two were moved into a bigger pot early on and put outside in direct sun; a third awhile after; and the rest, well, they were left in front of what wasn’t a great window for sun exposure to begin with. Look at that difference, and the roots far more so: a gallon of soil held tight vs, for the smallest, no discernible side roots, only the white squiggle it started out of the seed with. Same age.

Problem was that I’d needed more soil and buying more soil meant being out in the sun at the nursery during business and non-rush-hour hours and finally I simply did it.

The little ones will catch up soon enough.

And yes, I blogged several weeks ago about planting new seedlings. They were from the same batch as these and they all died in the first 24 hours. I transitioned the rest more gently from scraggles in the window to being in bigger pots outside to in the ground and I waited till I had most of them too far along for the snails to go after.

And then I went looking for baby apples and snapped clamshell covers over all the sweet Fujis I could find and as many of the more sour, less vulnerable Yellow Transparents as I could. Some of last year’s clamshells had given up the ghost; I clearly need more. A good problem to have this year.

“Can I write about it on my blog?”

She told me sure, anything that raises awareness. Get checked.

My oldest was 27 when her melanoma was diagnosed. It was a highly aggressive type. She had had to go to the doctor twice in two weeks for something utterly unrelated when he surprised her by saying he thought that that mole had changed since her earlier appointment and he wanted to check it.

Mole? Who was talking about the mole?

He had actually biopsied it several years earlier but he didn’t let that stop him from doing so again–it just felt to him that something was wrong there.

They took out four inches to quite some depth from her arm. She didn’t have to do chemo and she didn’t have to do radiation because he’d caught it so very early, possibly in its first two weeks. She did have to have frequent checks thereafter; melanoma can recur anywhere.

Her experience got me to stop ignoring the spot my husband had been saying he saw on the top of my head. Mine was basal cell and at least eight months old by that point, and I’d just shrugged and written it off as another manifestation of lupus. Which it was not. By that point they had to take out over an inch of hair permanently from the center of my scalp, leaving a thumbprint indentation in my head and a cowlick that are there still. I was lucky.

She is past the five year mark and heading towards six. No return of her cancer. It just dawned on me, writing this, that wait–so so am I. Although, basal-cell, paid attention to, is not a big deal. Melanoma is very much a big deal.

A doctor had a bad feeling about it, trusted his instincts, and insisted on checking again.

And so my daughter is alive.

We’re selling everything, she said, we’re not taking anything with us. We’ll start over after we get there.

When she told me their travel plans, that made more sense. Her husband’s about to start his medical residency in Boston. They aren’t going straight there, though; they’re going to Massachusetts from California by way of Alaska, driving, so as to let the grandparents see their little ones. Road trip!

She sent out a note last night of a few things that hadn’t sold at their garage sale, saying, please, come, take, free now, it’s all going to charity in the morning, if you want it it’s yours.

I told her I’d bought my crockpot at eighteen–nineteen, though, come to think of it, it was after I’d moved out of the dorms. Crockpots were a new thing and a huge fad and not cheap and given that I was paying my college tuition for the year out of my summer job money, it was quite the splurge.

It has, though, one can definitely say at this point, seen better days. It had a teflon surface and if you ever want to see what those look like this many years later, well, as Richard finalized it this morning, “We’re not cooking in that” (this would not be a change) and I said it needs to no longer be taking up space in our house. An easy agreement.

Sentimental value object upstaged by actually useful sentimental value object: I am badly going to miss Heather and Jared when they’re gone and I will think of them when I slow-cook apple butter. Or take a pot of soup to the Ronald McDonald House at Children’s Hospital (and not have to borrow a safe crockpot for it. They then have you transfer the food from yours to theirs when you get there.)

Heather’s little cooker will help take care of patients and their families here while Jared’s taking care of patients there. I like that.

She almost didn’t tell me what the price tag had been at the yard sale and she almost didn’t let me pay it but she relented.

And so I finally have a big crockpot again that I would actually be willing to put food into. My late ’70’s sunflower-orange-and-brown one (I kid you not) is hereby utterly evicted.

I love most that I now have a memento of a young couple I adore and whose kids I hope someday will go to Stanford so I can get to see who they grow up to be. Because I know they’ll be adults to look forward to.

Meantime, got any favorite recipes?

He banked left, then quickly right, twirling around at the last like an Olympic ice skater’s grand finale just outside the window. Seeing that he’d gotten our attention, (me: Did you see that? Husband: Yeah I saw that) he nodded, hesitated a moment, and then went back out in the manner he’d come in.

Oh. Right. The birdfeeder’s gone empty–I’ll get right to it, thanks.

So yes, the Cooper’s hawk is fine after being attacked by that raven yesterday. One can only marvel at his timing with the thought, as if it were a wild creature’s intention, that it was nice of Coopernicus to let us know.

We were just sitting down to dinner when the phone rang with a spammer and we heard the thwack against the window in the other room. Interrupted anyway, I got up to check.

No sign of a downed bird but there was our male Cooper’s hawk perched on the netted cage that covers the blueberries. He was very nonchalant about my approaching across the room from my side of the glass: just an old familiar sight.

No sign of a dove in his talons, though; it must have gotten away. A few times a finch has managed to tuck wings in tight and zoom into that cage and need rescuing (must have hit just the right, most stretched-out portion of the netting) so as he looked down and around under there I wondered if that’s where some little escapee had gotten off to. (Nope.)

A large winged shadow passed by from somewhere I couldn’t see overhead. The ravens know that if they land in my backyard I will go after them with a squirt gun, and so they don’t. He looked up but seemed to ignore it.

And then he didn’t. And suddenly there was our Cooper’s hawk flying off and bam! There was a raven attacking him from behind!

Get OFF me you doofus there’s NO prey to steal! as they zoomed together towards the neighbor’s trees and out of sight all too fast for me to see if there was any harm done. Flying strongly, at least, and he’s a good deal more muscular and equipped for hunting than they.

I think he’ll be just fine.

Skype. Three grandchildren four and under.

Daddy, holding the baby, hands the iPad to the two-as-of-this-month as they walk down the hall together so that Hudson can show us something.

Remember Etch-a-Sketches? How you shook them up and down really hard to erase the picture?

He was so proud of being trusted with that thing and he really carried it off: the ceiling, his face, the floor (and I couldn’t tell what-all else) at race track speed as he pumped his arms up and down, while on our side of the screens we were absolutely helpless with laughter.

Still giggling.

Twenty-eight years. It took twenty-eight unfathomably long years.

Debbie married someone who grew up here, and I grew up with her and her brothers. She stayed in Maryland while my husband and I moved to her husband’s hometown when we were at the baby-and-toddlers stage of parenthood.

So from time to time I would be back visiting my folks (before they moved away in retirement) and from time to time she would be visiting her in-laws.

But every single time she came to town, I would be out of town. Or sick, memorably, pneumonia one time and I forget what the other times. And every single time I was back home, she was out of town. Again and again and again.

As her in-laws’ health slowly failed in old age, their kids would come to visit, and one time I looked at this guy in church who was the spitting image of Curt and went, You’re…and he, knowing my parents’ daughter was in his growing-up ward, went, You’re…? Yes. And so I shared with him what I’d written when her brother my age had died and he passed it gratefully along to Debbie and all her family.

His eighty-nine-year-old father passed away last week. With all of his children in town and one of them by his side in the middle of the night comforting him as he slipped away at home. We should all be so lucky.

The funeral was today, and the children were admiring, sober, funny, thoughtful, with a tear or three. Debbie’s husband recounted several of them going on a bike ride with their Dad setting the pace; he finally had had to say, Dad, we need a break a moment, would you mind slowing down a bit?

And then he asked, And guess how old Dad was then? Seventy-seven. He rode 250 miles a week. If the mountain went straight up he rode straight up, none of this zigzagging slowly because it’s too hard. Here to San Francisco and back, all the time.

The children addressed their mother directly with great love as she sat quietly in her wheelchair watching the proceedings. Her hair was perfect and her dress was beautiful. One child after another thanked each of their parents’ caregivers by name. It is hard to be a long-distance child in such circumstances and those good people had loved their folks and had made it possible for them to stay in their home as they’d tended to them.

Their mother’s Alzheimer’s had taken any semblance of recognition away from her long ago and yet they addressed her as if she were wholly here, knowing that someday she would be able to look back on her life and hear and know every word. This was for her. This was for them all. This was for all of us.

At the end, as people filed outside, I found myself gradually making my way towards that wheelchair, carefully, not wanting to get in the family’s way.

Debbie was tending to her mother-in-law. I waited.

She saw me and as my face lit up, waiting, waiting, she looked like doIknowOH IT’S YOU!!!! We threw our arms around each other, then held each other at arm’s length, taking each other in.

And in that moment I knew that over all those years and all those frustrating, missed opportunities, it wasn’t just me, she had wanted to connect like that, too. And finally, finally, there we were.

How ARE you?!!

I was sure I had seen familiar backs of the heads at the front of the chapel and so I had. The crowd parted enough right on cue then for me to see: her parents had come from Maryland, too, and she turned to them. Her mother had the same moment of wait, do I–OH!!! (Hugs!) And in excitement she turned to her husband to share the joy.

He wasn’t quite getting it. To be fair, I might well have been a teenager the last time he’d seen me. He wasn’t quite hearing the name in the noise or putting it together or knowing that face but I gave him a quick hug anyway and I knew they would fill him in later. I can just hear it: Wait, that was Lawrence and Frances’s daughter?!

His wife asked after me, after my parents; yes, they’re in good health, yes, Mom still walks a few miles every day, they’re doing great!

Someone from home. For the three of them and for me. Love, stretching all the way back to my birth and Debbie’s (and my father-in-law grew up with her dad!) and all our parents as newlyweds and young parents. All those memories suddenly come together in one chapel far away in California.

I miss Curt and I am sorry for his family’s loss. I do know that after all the hospice care, it’s a relief, too; they know their dad, grampa, and great-grampa is free to look down on them now with all earthly sorrows fallen away.

But what a deep sense of joy. So much love. It was always there. Loss let it be seen.

A knock at the door. The old dishwasher was wheeled away with our dolly while the other worker stood there with the new one up on his shoulder (!!!) waiting to get by to bring it inside for us. That was at 2 pm and then we spent the next seven hours on the installation.

Even he didn’t see any way to get those two top screws into that box that’s supposed to go against the wall under the sink, not with the disposal in the way. He was suddenly glad he’d bought a tube of caulking during the run to the hardware store for the right screws and a level (after an hour of both of us looking for his level)–he would just basically glue it to the wall. We had the two lower screws in, the most important ones, so, hey, that would do it. As he caulked while wedged in at an impossible angle he casually mentioned that I was now going to have to hold it in place there for ten minutes while it set.

Blink. Dude. I can barely even reach, much less…

But wait, I think, there’s more than one way–and so I turned around, laid my back on the floor, and put one foot up against that thing. There you go. Easy peasie. Staring at the skylight straight above, watching the seagull kiting on the breeze.

Except that before I could congratulate myself my posterior was already starting to slide across the kitchen and I had to tell him to grab that box quick. I readjusted. I ended up spending the ten minutes holding tight to the cabinet door, still far easier than the alternative.

Does this thing come out? (The third rack at the very top for putting silverware and spatulas and the like into. There’s a silverware tray at the bottom like every other brand, but this was to give you more flexibility with big stuff.) Surely it comes further forward than this?

Huh. Let me go check.

I googled Bosch 500 series dishwasher. Turns out we’d bought a new model. Their own site doesn’t even show that third rack open on that one, but I found a photo somewhere else with it pulled all the way like one would expect. Nothing in the manual. Meantime, he simply called customer service–and they didn’t know either at that hour on a weekend. In the end we simply loaded the front third of that third rack because that was all we could reach of it.

(Turning it on at long, long last) What’s this 2:30 thing? Our model doesn’t count down to when the load is finished.

No, it doesn’t.

Actually, turned out, yes it does.

And so we have it going with the ultimate test one could throw at a new dishwasher: can it clean a pan that an angel food cake was baked in that was not presoaked and scrubbed before throwing it in there? No dishwasher I’ve ever had has been able to do that. Time (current reading: 14 minutes left) will tell.

And it’s a beautiful, beautiful dishwasher. So far so good.

Oh and? Even the floor looked scorched where the heating element of the Maytag had been. We so lucked out. So close.

(Okay, now I’m just stalling, waiting for that Bosch to hurry up and finish.)

And… (It’s past our bedtime but we both want to know.)

The angel food cake pan is absolutely spotless.

Old dishwasher: out.

That took a lot longer than expected but we promised each other we would be all sweetness and light while working on this. He didn’t fit into some of the tight spaces and forgot that I might call a plier a screwdriver at the hour it had gotten to and at one point I stopped myself and went, Wait: I am being growly. And I stopped being growly

It is done.

Oh, wait, I know what I was going to say–I got a happy email from my doctor, saying: Scan read. Looks good.

Yes!

I think, actually, there was one in the room the whole time but at 4 am one does not remember details.

And so I stumbled across the house to where I knew my rescue inhaler was, next to the weather station that said it was 38 outside. Brrr. The mango monitor? Forty-nine. Good. I finally fell back asleep about when it was time to wake up. Richard was trying to let me get some rest.

Late, I had to eat and drink in a very few minutes, when I am not someone who likes breakfast early, because they required a four-hour fast before the CT scan and X-rays. Remember that drink 8 oz every two hours or my kidneys fail thing? You simply get through what you have to get through, but I knew I would be in no shape to drive.

Richard dropped me off, the techs there were wonderful, and Michelle picked me up when it was over. I knew worrying before I get any results back is a complete waste of emotional space but it’s easy to do–I didn’t even pull out my knitting, I read a Time mazine to keep my brain busy, and then there was my sweet daughter asking if I’d like to go check out that Penzey’s spice store?

She knew I’d never been but that I’d been wanting to. When there wasn’t a parking space close enough, she dropped me right at the door so I wouldn’t have to do a minute’s time in the sun before she hurried in herself.

My spices were generally old as dirt and about as useful as. Michelle thoroughly enjoyed my delight. Four different types of cinnamon. Indian spices. Vanillas. Mixes of their own making. The cream of tartar I was out of that I needed to make a certain someone’s angel food birthday cake coming up.

There was a pretty jar with a lift top at each display so that you can inhale, imagine the dishes to be made of it and then on to the next. Tandoori, Sate, Northwoods Fire seasonings, Parisienne Fines Herbes, really good Chinese Five Spice, a seafood soup base with clams, crab, shrimp, and lobster as the first ingredients, those all went into the basket. The pizza seasoning or the version specifically designed to doctor frozen ones?

Michelle reminisced longingly over the pizzas on homemade bread I used to make (before her dairy allergy set in), rolled up and sliced cinnamon roll style to try to contain the kids’ messes–and so we agreed it had to be the real-thing bottle.

I finally sneezed after I got back in the car. Once.

And then she whisked me away to Timothy Adams for hot chocolate just because. Adams was there, cheerful as always and glad to see us. Totally unfazed by my slumping down over there–I’d needed that.

They all totally rescued my day. I didn’t make it to knit night–I was just too tired to even think of it–but I made it through what I needed to and had a good time after, topped off by Skype time with the grandsons.

I did, however, manage to spot and pull this nasty little specimen out by the roots after dinner. (For scale, the lid of that big bin is half again the size of our trash can’s.) This one weed, at least, is gone from us and it can never come back. It was deeply, deeply gratifying.