A pre-fab Diamond brand vegan pie crust made of ground pecans and oat flour: I was intrigued when she showed it to me. Sure, I’ll try it out.

I’m sorry we did not get to it before John left, but we looked at each other tonight and knew we could not let the last of the Andy’s peaches age out of their supreme goodness, and peaches and pecans, well, the state of Georgia can tell you those two were meant to be together.

Notes to my future self: my 1952 Betty Crocker said to bake an 8″ peach pie with 3 1/3 tbl flour and 2/3 cup sugar. Also a tbl of butter, but not for the allergic and I forgot to add her Miyoko version in. It’s fine. I added a tsp cinnamon and let the peach slices sit soaking in the mixture for a few minutes.

But that 425F for 40 minutes for 8″ (measured across the top of the interior of the pan) was a bit much for it. I would decrease temp or time next time.

But there should most definitely be a next time and it will most definitely do.

Here, taste the tip of a spoon here, see what you think of it so far.

They approved.

Then the kids drove to San Francisco to Dandelion Chocolate for some sibling time and brought home a splurge of bakery goodies and hot chocolate. Not your standard lunch. That orange sanguine entremet–wow!

As my dad loved to say, How many meals do you eat in your life? Now: how many do you remember?

Then John drove me to Kings Mountain Art Fair, with the ocean to one side on that twisty road and Silicon Valley laid out below on the other and the Fair on the spine of the ridge, where we got to see Mel and Kris. Mel knew exactly what I wanted when I broke my favorite tall mug and held the new one up in happy anticipation of my delight. Which he got. I liked it even better than the old one. Kris was there for the first time in several years, her chemo long over and looking great. I picked up one of the smaller mugs–and it had a sheep on it! (With apologies to them that my photo washes the colors out a bit.)

I knew she played with adding hummingbirds and dragonflies and honeybees…

She was delighted that I was the one who bought her first sheep.

Not long after we walked back in the door, Michelle and I ran an errand exploring a store that sold favorite pantry items she hadn’t been able to find in Boston. And because she liked going there; it was part of being home.

John cooked dinner.

We all got to FaceTime with Lillian, who wanted to show her grampa the wart on her foot in solidarity. She wanted to see his foot, too. He gently told her she wouldn’t want to.

And then at long last we turned off that goshawfulloudnoise that had been going in the kitchen for 26 hours at that point (24 is about optimal on the conching) and John and his dad worked for a couple hours more at cooling and re-warming and thus (hopefully) tempering our new batch of homemade chocolate correctly while getting some one-on-one time of their own.

I got to do the honors of pouring it out and did as messy a job as I ever do and we managed not to devour it before it had even set, probably because, really? We had a lot of cleanup to do. And we’d had a lot of chocolate today already.

And all of it was very very good.

I like days like this!

You’re going to like this part.

His kidney stone moved to where it somehow doesn’t hurt, and the clinic’s urologist saw him and is keeping tabs on him. Cardiology set him up on a heart monitor for two weeks to get a more complete diagnosis.

And while that was getting started, I was in the next town over seeing my surgeon #2.

Who told me that surgeon #1 had called him and warned him she was sending a doozy of a case over. I got a bit of, Oh, *you’re* the one!

She had told me of potential nerve damage.

He told me it was way more than that. With no colon nor rectum in there holding things in place, things just slosh around, and–he was pleased that I knew what adhesions were–that ovary they couldn’t find on the ultrasound: it could be fused with my tailbone. Anything could be anywhere.

Finding it all and fishing it out and freeing it amongst all the adhesions risked my small intestine.

I was stunned. I’d had no idea.

I asked him how many hysterectomies he’d done on patients with colorectomies.

It was rare. He’s been practicing a long time. He held up five fingers and said–But they all had cancer. There’s a risk/life balance decision that has to be made. He went through all the testing I’d been through, and he too had tested, giving me a pap smear just to make sure and do due diligence.

And my reaction to that smear was to start bleeding on the spot, and it’s still noticeably going. But that’s not necessarily cancer.

A side note here: his nurse had come in first and while she asked questions, I said that the bleeding had started small and gradually crescendoed over the two years till it was (this much). I wrote about it while waiting for this appointment, I told her, and was quite surprised that the next day it was far less.

And then friends told me they’d put me on their prayer lists. I didn’t know–and it changed, and make of that what you will, I told her. (A thank you to all you who prayed or Thought Good Thoughts my way, which to the loving G_d I believe in fully counts. Love, as they say, is love.)

Come back in three weeks, the surgeon said, and we’ll have the results of that pap smear.

But as he said it, we both were sure we knew what it would say and what we would say and that it would wrap it all up nicely. He didn’t quite say, And tell your friends to pray again, y’know, just to make it a little easier on you.

Having told him about my husband’s hospitalization, I told him of the ones who had asked what they could do to help. And then they’d joyfully made a day trip out of it with their teenagers to make sure I didn’t miss out on my favorite peaches.

And with that I left him with the most perfect single Kit Donnell ever, with the divine scent of tree-ripened perfection. He was blown away by just the smell and sight of it and the kindness of people he didn’t even know and he wanted to know where this had come from so he could find more for his own family.

Such a good man. His patients are lucky to have him. And lucky, in my case, soon not to have to!

Ceramic makes pie crusts crisp in a way no other material does.

A few years back, I asked my friends Mel and Kris if they ever made pie pans. They said no, but then decided to go play with the idea. I happily got two of the results.

They are big, meant for baking for a crowd, not like my store-bought one.

Today Richard came home from his sixth day of treatment and fifth day in the hospital. There was one last slice of grape pie in the smaller pan from last week and, after having saved it for the breakfast he didn’t ever get to have, he finally got to taste it.

He settled into his chair in the kitchen with no desire to spend any more time on any bed during daytime, and I got to work on those peaches. I at last felt like I could. Like I could breathe again.

Boiling water, peaches in the mesh strainer, count to five, out, peel, slice, work a little orange juice through, freeze a pie’s worth. A big pie’s worth!

Four, so far. Tomorrow I’ll tackle the next box. The neighbors to either side got peaches. Proud parents sent us a photo of their toddler’s absolutely gleeful face after biting into one.

I know a family with teenagers who are going to need a surprise pie in the coming darker colder months. A big pie. To let some of their peach gallivanting to rescue a couple in pain come back to them again in thanks.

One friend asked a few days ago what she could do to help and I somehow let myself say out loud in spite of myself that it was the week the Kit Donnell peaches at Andy’s were ripe, that I consider them his best, that I wait all year for them and I was just going to have to miss them this year. Otherwise I’d be buying a bunch and freezing them.

We can do that!

What?! He’s in Morgan Hill, it’s a 45 minute drive each way when the traffic is good, I can’t ask you to do that!

She and her family decided to make a day trip to Santa Cruz, let the kids have fun at the beach before they all finish growing up and going away, stop at Andy’s on the way and get some of those fabulous peaches for themselves, too and learn about what he had to offer. So much of California was still new to them. Exploring is fun!

The whole thing turned into so much joy. They were absolutely jubilant at the day, the trip, the getting to do something that they knew meant so much to me and we had a good hug this morning.

Her daughter helped me load my boxes into my car after the main meeting at church, I got them home and then made a beeline for the hospital.

Where I surprised Richard with a new Nautilus puzzle that I had ordered Tuesday, right before all this hit. A clown fish.

Having no idea that the most pieces in the smallest size would be the best for doing on a bedside hospital tray.

Two of the friends who stopped by to visit him couldn’t help but match up a couple of pieces themselves, to our great delight.

When I was growing up my mom baked a lot of pies, and one of my favorites was one that it surprised me that none of my friends had ever had.

They thought the very idea was weird.

But then, my folks took us to pick-your-own farms and the grapes that went into those pies were not your bland Thompson seedless: they were meant to have flavor.

They were surely geared towards the DIY winemaker types but we were Mormons so we made juice and we got pie.

All of which came back to me when my friend Catherine, delighted at my delivering some peaches, gifted me with some grapes from her garden. Then when she saw my reaction she put more in the bag. Then more. After all, I’d done that drive so she didn’t have to. (We have a standing arrangement that if they’ll let me buy that many, I’ll pick up a lug for her, too.)

Hers were about the size of cranberries. I ran a handful at a time in my palm, searching for stems and hoping I got them all. It reminded me of processing sour cherries–a bit of work but so worth the effort.

The pie is in the oven and I put too many in and the top fell apart because I rolled it too thin and it is overflowing a little and the only recipe I found was for seeded Concord grapes from my 1952 Betty Crocker so it’s all guesswork. But since my mom used that cookbook I figured it was the one to start with. Their 1 1/3 c sugar became 1 1/4 because I know their editors went heavy on the stuff in everything but I didn’t dare mess with it too much on the first try.

It wasn’t done as I was typing this but pulling it out of the oven to see if it was, I dipped a spoon at the edge to see what I was getting.

Wow that was good.

Even better, now that it’s out.

I know who needs to try some of this. Hey Catherine!

We were standing around not quite eating yet, I was listening to other family members and I didn’t even see him take one. I had quartered a heaping large serving bowl’s worth of Baby Crawford peaches right before time to leave so they would be as perfect as possible.

It was the motion that caught my eye: his face did this sudden downward-nod of someone caught by surprise as a soft “Oh wowwww!” came out of his mouth. He had not been expecting that.

I had also brought a smaller bowl of green gauge plums and none of them knew what they were. The guy’s daughter biting into one of those had the same reaction as her dad had had.

Are these from your trees? –Where was this place??

I think we have some new Andy’s Orchard enthusiasts.

When it was time to go, between the eleven adults and the baby everybody wanted to see and the three year old being adorable, we found ourselves lingering alongside the staircase without quite reaching the door. The toddler was in her daddy’s arms at that point, and I softly sang to her, So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen good night!

She stared at me in delight and an expression her daddy explained for me: astonishment.

Because every single night at home at their own house across the country, they sing that song to her. While going up their staircase one step at a time. ‘The sun has gone to bed and so must I.’ And with that they put her to bed.

And here was her great aunt whom she has no previous memory of meeting before tonight having no idea of any of this singing it to her in front of her grandparents’ staircase at bedtime.

The phone rang.

Our nephew is in town visiting his in-laws, letting them play with the baby we haven’t met yet, and his parents flew in, too; would we like to join them all for dinner tomorrow?

(Is this a trick question. Some of my favorite people.)

What should we bring? I asked Richard to ask him.

Uh, uh, (I pictured him calling over to his mother-in-law and then wondering why he chose the words that popped out of his mouth next.) “Fine fruit.”

I guffawed when Richard conveyed that to me.

Andy Mariani considers his Baby Crawford his best peach and this year the crop was good. Two days after picking them up Friday will mean peak ripeness. Trying to remember, was it The French Laundry or Alice Water’s Chez Panisse that after a prix fixe dinner that would be for most of us a once-in-a-lifetime experience (I’ve never been to either so this is strictly hearsay) they’ve been known to serve, for the exclamation point of a dessert, a perfect August Andy Mariani peach.

Fine fruit? I think we can make that happen.

I was unloading the car from Andy’s Orchard as the mail truck pulled up nearby.

After weeks in the 70s, 88F was hot, with a slight fire shadow to the air even though we’re hours away from the worst of those.

Going and putting down the heavy lug of peaches and wrestling the top open was not something I could do quickly enough as he was passing by and those could use a day to reach perfection anyway so I offered him a Green Gage. It had rolled out of the bag onto the seat of the car and had gone from there to my pocket. Easy to get to.

He held the little yellow/green two-bite snack in his hands wondering out loud, What is it?

It’s a plum. I just got back from the farmer’s in Morgan Hill.

Did you pick it?

No, I bought it, but it was picked today or yesterday.

Sounded good to him!

Just then my next-door neighbor came running up holding out a bottle of cold water. She had seen him walking past with his shirt unbuttoned in the heat, which I’ve never seen him do in all the years he’s been on this route, and she had to make sure he was okay.

So he got something to wash his miniature plum down with and if he threw the seed in my front yard I say good for him. Maybe it’ll sprout. Green Gage plums are rarely grown on a commercial scale because the trees are difficult and production is iffy–but when they do, they are so good.

But what was really really good was seeing my neighbor seeing that need (I was sorry I had not) and immediately doing something about it. She’s a peach.

Sometimes you just need to change the focus, so I drove to Andy’s today, bought two big lugs of peaches, got home, and texted a friend with whom I had a multi-year agreement but hadn’t done anything this summer because the peach supply per customer had been limited. Till this week.

Did she want a half lug of each of the two types I’d bought or should I freeze half my haul? The great Loring of my youth and Silver Logan. I was fine either way.

YES she wanted peaches from Andy’s!

(I threw in some of his early-variety Gage plums just because I could.)

Her husband is a beekeeper, and she sent me home with not one not two but three jars of his honey from different hives. Some friends you can never get ahead of, you know?

And then I had put it off long enough. I tried to look up how to contact the new surgeon online, but you can’t–you have to call (just like I’d been warned by the other surgeon.)

They had been expecting me.

Summer vacation time means it’ll be three weeks. About four miles away. There was one earlier slot: first thing in the morning four cities away where rush hour traffic would add a minimum extra 90 minutes, two hours to be sure. Honey, I don’t even get up for cheap flights that early.

So. Let’s see how much knitting I can get done before I get sliced and diced.

I got the nicest thank you note yesterday from a waitress.

While we were traveling, we invited some relatives out to dinner, and after asking them where they’d like to go since they knew the area and we didn’t, they said, Well, are we talking Olive Garden or–?

The –? won out. We hadn’t seen his sister in awhile and as my father used to say, How many meals do you eat in your life? Now, how many do you remember?

The meal itself was very good, the waitress, perfect.

It wasn’t till after we flew home and I was working on the bills that something seemed off. Found the receipt.

The math didn’t math at all. The intention had been good but someone had been a little too tired to think straight.

We had to make it right.

At least I had her first name on that receipt, and so I sent a check to, simply, FirstName, c/o that restaurant, asking them to please give her the tip amount she should have gotten and apologizing profusely to her.

A side note here: it helped greatly in those first moments that Richard had entered the restaurant’s name and address into his Waze app to help us find the place after his sister had named it, even though she knew perfectly well how to get there–there it was in his phone’s memory. Oh wait, it was on the bill, too. Of course.

There was a card in the mail from a name I didn’t recognize and as I opened it up and read that sweet note I almost cried. What a lovely, lovely young woman. I wish her all the best in all that life brings her from here on out.

Everything about making your own chocolate is messy. Towards the end there he looked at the front of my shirt in some amazement.

That’s why I put on an old one, hon!

And it is so worth it.

It’s a good thing it makes so much: once you’ve stirred that thick liquid nonstop while holding the bowl for 15-30 minutes in cool water and then again in warm to lower and re-raise the temp to get the right crystalline structure to try to get that perfect shiny tempered snap while not letting any water touch the inside whatsoeverdon’tyoudare, then an hour-plus of cleaning up the equipment including spraying a connected pair of granite rollers with hot water while holding them above the sink for way too long… (But you only do that after you’ve paper toweled all the chocolate off that you possibly can for the sake of the plumbing.)

You love that you got it done. But you really don’t feel like starting the next batch that very day, even if the machine claims you can get right to making your husband’s preference of 80% dark to mine of ~76%.

She who does the math rules the superfine sugar box. More or less.

(Parchment paper under the molds. Always. To create samples not spills.)

Last year a drop of water got into the melanger while it was just getting going: I had done the usual step of first running the cacao nibs through the Cuisinart, not realizing that its lid wasn’t entirely dry from the dishwasher. It was the second batch of pure cacao crumbs that touched it.

The chocolate in the machine instantly seized into a hard rock and jammed the motor. I leaped to turn it off fast.

I gouged and scraped the stuff out of there and set it aside. I didn’t know if the machine was toast. I didn’t want to know. It’s an entry level machine for hobbyists that was actually originally for dry lentils, upgraded a bit when the manufacturer found out what it was being used for and trying to match that market–not a more seriously-priced and -engineered one. But at the time we found it, it was all there was out there that we knew of. Plus we could buy it on Amazon points.

After what Congress did to the American people and the rule of law yesterday, after Monday’s little surgery that was so much fun, on the Fourth of July with no fireworks because lives were lost when the vendor’s warehouse blew up this week… I needed to do something, anything, to give myself a break from moping.

I thought I would start in the morning. It was 2:00 when I finally turned on the oven. (No professional cacao bean roaster nor winnower here.) But I got it turned on.

Half a 5 lb bag of cacao nibs got baked and Cuisinarted. (A side note: raw cacao that some swear is a health food? It’s a source of salmonella poisoning. It is typically fermented on trays in the sun, wildlife can walk on it and poop on it, just don’t. Plus the heat greatly brings out the flavor anyway.)

Superfine sugar got calculated.

The melanger turned on. It turned on. It worked.

We added the crumbled nibs slowly, slowly, slowly, taking turns, making sure not to overtax the thing with too many big particles at once. Let it work its way up.

It worked.

It’s working. It’s working! And noisy and there’s a fine spray of crumbs across the counter that no water is going near till this batch is done and poured and safe and man, it smells so good.

Tomorrow we pour it into the molds. The tempering will likely be half- (insert pejorative of your choice here.)

I had been waiting so long to find out that we could still do this, knowing how good all this could be again. And we can.

Congratulations, one person told us back then, You picked the hottest day on record in Washington, DC.

Which was topped thirty years later at 99 to our 98. It took that long. But at the time, we were like, Oh. It’s hot? I mean, yeah, I guess it is but, um, we kind of hadn’t really noticed.

Jokes about how maybe I should stand on the low stone wall along the garden pathway near the temple’s doors so that I could get up into the same picture as him and his family.

The skunk raiding the marshmallow off his campfire stick right over the fire on our honeymoon in the Shenandoahs with its tail brushing his arm as it sat back and savored the thing–with his face pleading, Just don’t laugh. PLEASE don’t laugh.

His consolation prize being that the skunk sided with him over me: a long slow roast over my burn it fast and crunchy and blackened and then reach for more while he’s still working on three marshmallows ago.

The hair stylist in Indiana who couldn’t cut my hair because she was husking.

What the heck is husking?

How do you not know what husking is?! She’s helping bring the corn harvest in.

Oh.

George Winston’s December album playing softly while we turned off the lights and with our babies in our laps, watched the snow fall (and fall and fall) in New Hampshire to the music as each perfect silvery flake danced and sparkled in the moonlight.

Our oldest remembered, and took that album off to college.

The monochromatic boredom of white snow, grayed parking lot snow, more snow. And how pretty and quiet and peaceful it was. Along with the how do you shovel snow so you can pick up your husband from work and leave your kids alone inside but how do you shovel snow with them outside in weather that cold? You can’t take a baby out in zeroF for an hour+ while trying to watch the toddler while trying to get this done.

Somehow I got it done, or enough, anyway. I don’t remember how. Naptime? I just remember I had to, so I did.

The househunting trip in Spring in California, going straight from 72″ in 17 days to green, glorious green and flowers everywhere.

The kid who left me speechless by saying, Mom, I don’t think I could ever call anything on the East Coast a forest.

Say what now?? Why??

Because no redwoods.

We have got to get these kids an education… We flew us all home and played tourist in DC.

Taking my sister’s boys to where the sun sets as the ocean waves goodbye, laughing that yes that feels like you put your dawn on backwards in the morning.

The day we drove past the high school, knowing there would never be another Back To School night for us.

The knit night at Purlescence where I took my cell phone out of the shop for a minute, needing it to be on speaker and wanting to hear my son and where he could have a little more privacy. Then walking back in the shop, holding my phone out to my friends, and saying, This is my son. He’s calling to say he’s engaged!

The whole shop burst into applause and cheers. As well they should. Such a profound gift to our family Kim has been.

The arrival of grandkids.

The feeling, within five minutes of meeting my daughter’s boyfriend, of, I don’t know who you are. But I HOPE you marry my daughter.

He did.

The arrival of their two.

The missing them. The treasuring every moment with them when we are there with them. So much love.

Our younger two, hoping for those blessings too but entirely blessings themselves as they are. So proud of them. All of them.

The gratitude beyond words at this dear, dear man in my life who made all of this come to be with me and that he gets to still be with me and I still get to be with him, well beyond the time we once thought I might have left.

I got up this morning, picked English Morello sour cherries from the tree that he’d driven me over the mountains to Santa Cruz for and had helped me pick out in happy anticipation of moments to come just like these, let them soak in their sugary filling mixture for awhile and then put the pie in the oven to bake while I headed to Andy’s Orchard. Richard got off work, checked the pie, and had it cooling and waiting when I got home with the first peaches of the season and the newest Candycot apricot developed by the guy who gave the world the Anya: the Yelena.

Just an ordinary day. But one that gives a meaning I love to the new-to-us number of 45.

Yesterday I bought some mangoes at an Indian grocer because I knew that even if I didn’t find Alphonsos, that’s a place where they’d be likely to have good ones because they would definitely know what one should be. Which they did, although from Mexico and very fibrous. But the flavor made it worth the trip.

I felt conspicuously white and clueless looking curiously at a few labels of things that I had no idea what they were, but a little exploration is good for everyone. Foreign travel without the airfare, and you can always ask questions. Banana flowers? Think the size of a large butternut squash in the shape of a giant half-opened banana with peel pieces attached, all in a purplish brown. What on earth would you do with it? I only saw the one, so I left it so it could be appreciated by someone who wanted it.

Thinking of the waitress who once quickly slapped a banana leaf-wrapped sandwich-type entree out of my hand, exclaiming, No eat!

Oh. The leaf?

Yes! No eat!

I was glad she let me know!

No nonfat milk there.

So today, a quick trip to Trader Joe’s so we could have our hot cocoa in the morning.

An Asian woman who looked vaguely familiar, and apparently I did to her (quick, which parent from Back to School Nights twenty years ago was she? No idea) decided I was a friendly face and asked me a question.

Between her accent, my deafness, and the complete unexpectedness of it it took her three tries before I got that what she was asking was, “What is a good wine and do they have it here? Where would I find it?”

“I don’t drink,” I half-apologized to her. “I have no idea.”

She laughed (and then I did, too): “I don’t either!”

And with that, whoever she was, we smiled and went our ways, having each found someone a little bit more like ourselves than we knew.