For the first month I figured, let them be. New moms are so tired and toddlers can act out when there’s a new sibling upstaging them and you want your kids to be seen at their best–I remember the days. Give them some time to adjust.

But you know those peaches I got extras of at Andy’s on Friday weren’t going to eat themselves: they were meant to be shared.

Was it a good time, I texted.

Yes! she wrote back.

And so I brought the neighbors some Cal Reds and some Kiaweas, perfectly ripe.

She came out with the baby in a front pack sleeping blissfully all snuggled up in there. It was such a gift to let me get to see him. So much love. We caught up a moment, grateful for it, and then let each other go back to our evening.

Went out tonight, and turns out another couple was celebrating at the table next to us. Great food, good times, Flea Street Cafe has served us more of our anniversary dinners than anywhere else for a reason.

Till he got out of the car at home and went, in complete bewilderment, Wait–where’s…(checks inside car, checks under the car) my shoe??

We called. I headed back there and found myself following another car most of the way. Walked in.

They saw my returning face and went, Oh good, here it is.

And tried to hand me a credit card that I had never seen before. That’s not mine. I’d called because my husband has neuropathy and can’t feel his feet and he had somehow lost his shoe.

The woman who’d checked us in just a little earlier ran to retrieve the well-worn singleton for me–and laughed and laughed when I thanked her but added with a grin/shrug, I was kind of hoping it was lost forever and I could finally get him to wear a new pair, he loves these. Thank you!

Meantime, the driver of the car I’d followed had come in. It was her credit card. She was also the woman who’d been sitting at the next table and was delighted to see me again. She looked at the shoe in my hands and said she and her husband had been mystified why they’d seen a shoe sitting in the parking lot near the door on their way out–well, there you go!

We chatted like old friends, the way women tend to do.

It was their anniversary, too.

Forty-six.

Fifty-six!

Alright!

Took some of Andy’s fruit to the neighbors with the new baby.

And found out that the mom’s birthday is our anniversary. How cool is that?!

Costco was a zoo. Oh right, Father’s Day is Sunday.

So I offered him something nobody could buy: to make him a batch of fresh chocolate in the melanger for the first time since Christmas.

That certainly got me an emphatic YES.

I didn’t even notice that the name of the variety was Kisinga till it was going. Cute. It’s time to go start adding the sugar.

Got to the hospital ugly-early, they recommended I go home because I wasn’t going to see him at all for the next several hours anyway, he told me to go take a nap, so I did. Which helped a lot.

Immediately after the doctor messaged a few hours later to say the ablation had gone well and he had tested negative for other problems, yay…

…I heard someone trying the front door. What?! Like he’d skipped out on the whole shebang and Ubered home? I don’t think so!

Next, the doorbell rang. I saw the young man, I don’t think he saw me, and I don’t open my door to unexpected strange men. Especially not one who tried to get in before he tried to ask to.

He jimmied the doorknob again.

I picked up the phone and called the cops and AT&T committed the hell of killing my landline dead just as the 911 operator picked up:  from working to “Check tel line.”  I grabbed my cellphone. The cop was at my door within two minutes.

I told her that after that, I saw him going up to the door of the house across the street but the angle is such that I can’t see if he went in and I didn’t see him after that.

The neighbor next door came out and said he’d come up to their door too.

Just then, there was the neighbor across the street.

She said he was her pest control guy. She was horrified that he’d tried to walk in unannounced, but since she’d vouched for who he was and he hadn’t actually gotten into my house, the cop decided we were good and left.

Went back to the hospital to keep my sweetie company for several more hours of observation on their part and found he’d gotten a message that someone dear to us got hard news today–but it could still be benign.

Bleep all of that that needed to be bleeped. We headed to a local ice cream shop that makes all their own from scratch and now has Indian immigrant owners and got (oh look what they have now!) Alphonso mango milkshakes. Two. Size large, and I never order large, but I did.

So good. Totally rescued us. That, and having him home, safe and sound.

I made my first trek of the year to Andy’s Orchard today. (A bit of history on him here.) Red nectarines, several varieties of peaches, coral cherries went into my basket, you know that if he’s growing it he considers it the best tasting there is–

–but there was no sign of the iconic Anya apricots. A few other good ones, yes, but I was afraid I’d missed them for a second year in a row and there might not be a next year. So I asked.

Her: There might be some in the back–I’ll go check. She came back out with two boxes, saying that was all there were.

Me: Would it be greedy of me to take both?

Her: No, go ahead!

They are small and the color is uneven and that bit of mottling is from sugar spots inside the fruit. Give them a day to ripen perfectly and they’ll be ready to help our apricot-loving neighbors celebrate their baby.

There were two new signs near the farm: saying, not Andy’s Orchard, but Mariani Orchard. I have never seen that before.

I wonder (I so hope!) whether a younger member of the family decided to take it over and continue it on after all.

I picked the first pound of the sour cherries. The best part of having a rare (for here) tree is inviting friends over to come help themselves, but I’m not seeing much gleaning possibilities this year; the unusual rain in May wiped out a lot of the fruit set. I’m thinking we’ll get about three pies for the entire year.

But the cherries there are are the bigger for it, so, less work to process.

The sweet cherry tree had only just opened its flowers when that storm hit. We got one single cherry from it and it had five peck marks but I finally found one and it was mine and I brought it inside. Just…I tried to get myself to…don’t ask me to eat that–they wouldn’t…

The faster I get the white afghan done the faster I can go play with colorwork again. Twelve rows. Ice packs. The cabled rocks are deliberately random but it works because I said so and I would tell you how many there were but then I’d have to pull it out of the protecting zipped tote where I’ve stashed it for the night.

Besides, then I’d knit some more on it and it’s getting late.

It rained again last night. So odd.

At the sound of it, I am just not that adventuresome. And yet if you put some in front of me, most likely life and being a good example to my grandkids of being unafraid of something new would require that I gamely give it a try.

Maybe.

In a NY Times article called “13 Dishes You Should Eat to Understand Food,” the first thing mentioned is Rommegrot.

Sour cream porridge with smoked reindeer heart.

…Say what now?

Can you just hear my Swedish ancestors laughing and going, C’monnn, you can do it!

I’m picturing those reindeer we met on a farm in Palmer, Alaska, gently eating little bits of dry reindeer chow out of our hands (reindeer are surprisingly small.) The guide told us to be careful not to touch their antlers, because the soft velvet stage while they grow out caused, as a matter of protection to the animal, a great deal of pain if you did. Once the antlers were fully grown and hardened and much less vulnerable to damage and no longer full of blood they could lose, then they were fine.

They were gentle and trusting and happy to be fed.

On a cool day after we got home from our trip, I put on a sweater–and felt something in the pocket.

A single small piece of reindeer kibble had fallen in and followed me home.

Eat their hearts? But they’ve won mine.

The big Costco-box strawberries were good but had been in there since Thursday. Cooking them would definitely extend their shelf life.

So I blenderized them with a quarter cup sugar and about 2/3 a teaspoon of King Arthur Instant Clearjel, ie very processed (corn?) starch for, y’know, sour cherry pies and the like. Nuked it twelve minutes and poured it over sliced mangoes with leftover sauce for tomorrow.

And that was going to be the end of that.

Until he looked at the ice cream maker.

Can you put corn anything in ice cream? I asked, knowing that of course you can if you want to, it just sounded so strange.

Why don’t we try it?

So: 3/4 c. strawberry sauce, cream to fill it to two cups, two more tablespoons of sugar after a taste test and into the machine it went.

A few minutes later while doing a puzzle.

Him: I think we should check it to see if it’s done.

Me: It just started!

Him: I think we should check.

Me: If we check every three minutes we’ll run out before it’s done!

Him with a grin: Is this a problem?

Turns out the machine wasn’t turning so it’s a good thing we did check. Fixed that. We let it finish its business in peace.

And the verdict is, next time I think I’ll go half sauce/half cream because that was super rich. The sweetness level was not too much, just right.

It was very very good. Ten stars.

Do you remember how, at the very end of high school, everybody felt so close to each other because we saw now how much even our more casual friendships meant to us and knew that we would never see some of those friends again, maybe even the closer ones, we just couldn’t yet know who those would turn out to be across the future?

Like that.

Post-Christmas gifting I looked at my boxes of apricot slabs, did the math on how fast I go through those, and knew they wouldn’t hold me till Andy’s Orchard opens again in May. And nobody sells apricots like his dried-while-dead-ripe slabs. Plus I wanted to pick up something someone else wanted who was going to have a hard time getting there.

Three years ago there was a cherry orchard next to Andy’s. The new houses are big. They kept the name of that farmer on the development but I don’t think they left a single fruit tree in place.

On the other side of his farm, driving down that newly widened and piped road, the open field to the right was rapidly turning into apartment buildings and closely spaced houses. So much change in a month. I turned the corner to the left around the end of Andy’s towards his store and thought, That cannot be good. That’s too many gone.

Stumps…

As I filled up my basket, the guy on duty laughed when I said, These are for my cousin-in-law’s mother-in-law… I laughed too and said, But she’s a really nice person, I love her! She’s flying today from Germany to her son’s house an hour away and is hoping to be able to get here before you close next week. I’m not sure she’ll make it in time, so I’m making sure she’ll be able to get what she wants.

One of I believe Andy’s crew had come into the little store in the middle of the conversation; the two men clearly meant the world to each other, and in those moments they included me in that palpable love, too.

Together they told me.

The closing isn’t just next week.

Andy will do one more season.

And then that’s it. The land is in the process of being sold. The neighbors who complained about being next to a farm, well…

But they bought houses next to a farm! I exclaimed.

They appreciated that I appreciated the absurdity of that. I mean, fruit trees! How intrusive is that!

I had had a feeling this entire year that this was coming, and soon.

I just didn’t want it to be ‘soon’ as in ‘it’s actually happening now’.

I’m just grateful we get to have one last year.

Celebrating at Dandelion Chocolate this morning.

A day well spent.

Nighttime San Francisco Airport is always gloriously colorful this time of year as you drive in, from the towering trees to the rendition of the Golden Gate Bridge in holiday LEDs.

A quick hug, a rollaboard being pulled towards the brightly lit waiting doors, and we came home under the orange supermoon to a suddenly quiet house with happily planned leftover pastries for the morning to console ourselves by.

She’d made sure her vegan chocolate carrot cake in its pretty little box was at the top of her backpack. Right there under the zipper. With a grin.

I’ve seen a few small feijoa trees growing around here but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the fruit for sale in the chain grocery stores; they have a short shelf life.

Andy Mariani grows them. I don’t go to his farm but once or twice in the late fall to pick up some slab apricots and, during the holidays, stuffed figs, so I guess I’ve always missed the season. But today I did and there they were and I was curious and brought a box home.

I cut one of the green eggs in half. I gave us each a spoon to scoop it out, as one does.

Dang.

Instant memories: the lavender-infused angel food birthday cake at a nice restaurant that smelled wonderful but I’m sorry, it could only taste like the round decorative balls of impossibly slippery soap at my grandmother’s that made it so her nose could tell from a hundred feet if you’d washed your hands for dinner like she’d told you to do. And how the whole dinner tasted like your hands.

My experimenting with a dessert using a new extract and an exceedingly polite friend (hi, Kelly!) telling me apologetically that she and rosewater just had not made friends yet.

Not that I could place which brand in the distant past it was, but this I can tell you: that fragrant, ripe feijoa had a flavor that could go straight to your head.

Now what do I do with the rest of this crunchy shampoo?

A pie potluck, 4-5 pm, dinner was not being served, just pie. Anyone who wanted to could grab the mic and say something they were grateful for.

Which is how one woman who’d invited her friend found out that her friend was my neighbor across the street. We all had a great time catching each other up.

I wonder how many others walked in the door at home afterwards and said, Do you still want dinner?

Not really, I’m good. You?

Nah. It was all I needed.

I knew they wouldn’t be anything near Andy’s but they were pretty and I was missing fresh peaches. What I’d forgotten, though, was the likelihood that Costco late-season US-grown ones would be clingstone. And clingstones that had never been allowed to ripen.

After several days, they were beginning to soften up but the nose knew. Oh well, that had been a given all along.

They held onto those pits like a toddler guards its favorite toy, and when I finally managed to work them loose, my peach halves lost a chunk of their innards.

I scraped the mashed-up bits off as best I could and put them back in the centers.

Hey. I filled the centers with raspberries. Melted a quarter cup butter with maybe a bit more than that of brown sugar and some cinnamon (lemon would have been good, too–next time) and spooned that over the raspberries and took their pretty picture and then baked them for about an hour.

Stuffed peaches, there you go. Is that a thing? It is now.

He needed seconds to use up his ice cream. As one does.

Today was the last test result, the last appointment on the whole endometrial thing.

But first the oncology surgeon had to tell me that he’d taken that Kit Donnell peach home and shared it with his wife: he told me emphatically, That was the best! peach I have eaten. In. My. Life! He wanted to make sure he remembered the name of the variety right. He thanked me several times for telling him about Andy’s Orchard.  I looked it up, he told me: August.

He was clearly very much looking forward to next August’s crop.

The nurse had the biggest smile on her face.

Baby Crawford is the other really good one, I told him.

Oh! He was instantly on it, getting this down. He was not going to miss that either! Baby? Crawford.

I turned to her and apologized that I hadn’t brought two peaches last time, and she laughed hard and I thought, You were thinking the same thing. I should have. But I didn’t know you were going to be there. And I didn’t have enough left to bring a bunch.

So, on to business. No cancer. No virus that might someday cause cancer. No surgery. Fill this prescription to help with the atrophal shedding.

I told him, Plot twist: after two and a half years of bleeding, it is somehow almost almost gone. (How to tell G_d a joke: tell Him, You weren’t going to let up on that symptom till that man and his wife and maybe that nurse discovered that farm and that fruit, were you? Because those peaches are divine.)

At the last he said, with the very warmest of smiles, And then I never want to see you again. For your sake.