I was missing being able to eat a just-picked ripe peach or plum but wishing for a trip to Mariani’s was as close as I was going to be able to get. Today was not a turn for the better and I’m thinking I’ll take the doctor up on her offer come Monday of making sure I don’t have pneumonia.

I did have the one single Indian Free peach from my new tree that I picked about a week ago, maybe as much as a month early, to give the tree a rest and to thwart the critters–after all this waiting I thought it better that we get it imperfect than that the squirrels get it all.

Today: hey look–it had softened up and was ready. And so after all these months of anticipation, knowing we weren’t going to get it at its best, we cut it in half.

One side was white, the other a deep rosy pink. It was sweet enough and there were already nuances of flavors you don’t get from a grocery-store peach–wow, just wait till we get these at full ripeness. What a marvelous tree. This was already good.

But one very small peach. One could only wish for more.

Someone loves me. And the folks at Andy Mariani’s sent a get-well message home with the box.

Two friends wanted to come by a couple days ago and I had to tell them that between the deep cough and the fever, they really didn’t want to be here.

Then Richard, on the edge of the bug and not wanting to infect anyone just in case, didn’t show up at church Sunday either.

This afternoon I went to go get the mail and there at our doorstep, wrapped together in twine in a bow, were these two bars of chocolate and a get-well card containing an offer to run any errand I might need done while I’m down. Note that the Chocolove so far has been opened, sampled, and exclaimed over–definitely buying that one myself first thing. We will taste-test the second one tomorrow and stretch out the anticipation a bit: life is good.

A huge shout-out to Courtney and Alice and how could I not feel better after that?

We were all the way to the Aquarium Saturday before I realized I didn’t have a face mask in my purse. I usually do. I like to just go live a normal life as much as the next person so I didn’t think much of it.

I don’t do crowds very well, do I. Pass the grapes (zinc content in a healthy delivery package) and orange juice.

There was this volunteer tomato plant that showed up the last day of June, and I wish I’d taken a picture of it before sunset today–it’s bursting out the sides of my 36″ netting tent and covered in tiny yellow blossoms against the dark green leaves, very pretty. The first few clusters have grown up.

Cherry tomatoes.

I saw a glimpse of orange and lifted that cover to reach a bit blindly under the thicket of leaves for the first ripe ones–I’d never bothered to stake the thing in any way. I figured if one came right off in my hands it was ripe if not it wasn’t. That was a good one, and wait, here comes another, and another… I was surprised to get a range from ripe to greenish from that cluster but they’ll all be fully orange soon enough–clearly these don’t cling to the stem for dear life quite like my others.

They are the two on the left.  They’re larger than my Sungolds. I ate the ripest right there on the spot and noted that it had less flavor, less sweetness, was a lot more like store-boughts, but still, homegrown and they are (thank you vertical trampolines) squirrel- and pecking-free. Probably not the plant’s fault, come to think of it–you don’t get the sweetening effect of the sun when they’re hidden deep under there.

The other volunteer tomato, being up against the raised bed, it was like marking off a child’s growth against a doorjamb: I got to watch its height change. By the day. Four inches below, then four inches above the top of the planks across the weekend.

It’s starting to bloom too now. The first clusters of buds could be cherries…but there aren’t as many of them set together. The critters did get some of my heirlooms last year. Curious. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

The Aquarium, dinner in Santa Cruz–a long, fun day.

The tufted puffins with their golden (Republican candidate’s name) locks swept back over their heads.

The special jellies exhibit we’d wanted to see was still up. Blue jellyfish? Brown? Since when?

There is always an artists’ exhibit in there somewhere, and those jellyfish chandeliers–if anyone starts marketing them I’d be trying to figure out where to put one. Wouldn’t it be fun to watch one of those in an earthquake? (Mild, mild, keep’em mild and entertaining only, that’s all I ask.)

Off to Chocolate, that fabulous restaurant in Santa Cruz, only this time we looked up: if your ceiling has to include industrial pipes, then….!

Home, tired, done. Can’t afford to do all that very often but today was a day that worked out to go so we jumped in the car and went.

And on our way back, taking in the scenery and happy to play passenger so I could, I saw what was either a whale breach out in the Bay or a really big splash of a sea lion in the distance. And I finally figured out what the rows of old towering eucalyptuses silhouetted across the hilltops looked like. They’re a terrible tree for California: they were brought here from Australia in the 1800s to grow quickly for lumber but they make terrible lumber so they were just left to spread. They are magnets for lightning and their oil explodes in fires.

And yet–that variety so prevalent in that area has this airy poof at the top and going down the sides, tethered just enough to the ground below.

Sky jellyfish. And they are beautiful.

Andy’s Orchard. We’d been out of peaches for days and this would not do. Given the development pressure on prime farming land so close to San Jose and the financial hit that the drought has surely inflicted, we want to support Andy Mariani all we can.

The Golden Nectar plums, which I’d never heard of before, were worth the trip alone.

I dangled what I hoped would be happy anticipation: I put this picture on Facebook with how to make it and said I had a lot more of these zucchini/pattypan hybrid squashes to bring to knit night.

So. Cut cupcake squash in half and place cut side down on plate.  Add a spoonful of water; nuke for three to four minutes till soft. Turn right side up again and scoop out seeds. Fill each with a big spoonful of Alfredo sauce mixed with one egg, sharp cheddar (or blue cheese and/or parmesan as you choose) and cherry tomato halves. Bacon bits if desired. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.

Found one more squash this morning, but to be sure before heading out tonight I checked under those huge leaves one more time and found two more of a good size: how on earth had I missed those? (Well hey. Zucchini.) Seven went into a cloth bag.

All the way to Purlescence I was seeing the most unusual cloud formations–dalmation dog. Leopard print. Lots of little clouds against lots of blue.

Reactions when I put those green balls on the table ranged from oh cool! to oh okay to facial expressions of no no no please keep those far far away from me.

David came out of the back at the last and his face totally lit up when he saw those last two squash and I thought, okay, now I know who saw that post and was hoping. All yours, hon, please, take them–I have five more tiny ones and these have got to go. (I did not count the blossoms. I couldn’t bring myself to. I know you can stir fry those but an awful lot of them seemed to already have even tinier squashes already attached.)

He totally made my day as he made off with them in great delight.

Just before the shop closed down for the night, someone threw the doors open so we could hear the sounds and smell the ozone: it was RAINING! In August! And no it had not been in the forecast. A little, then more, then a good steady rain and lightning as I drove home. Rain rain actual rain, .04″ worth.

Those five tiny squash? With that extra water I’m guessing they’ll be full grown in time to try to ditch them at church.

Of course I went back. We’d eaten the last peach. Besides, having not bought any of those monster Flavor Heart pluots last week I had to.

This time I got to meet Andy Mariani himself, the rock star of great fruit as far as I’m concerned, and if I sound a little starstruck, he’s worked hard to earn it.

UC Davis created a great peach that’s too ugly for the mass market? He sells by flavor; Baby Crawford is now a customer favorite. The Kit Donnell in my hand is bigger than the Lorings were and was bred by Andy himself from those Baby Crawfords and named in honor of a friend of his, a fellow rare-fruit enthusiast.

He told me about a customer who asked him if she had to wait till the peach turned red to know it was ripe–she didn’t know that some peaches come in yellow and even green and red is not always an option.

And he picks his ripe.

I brought back last week’s box and got it refilled with various fruits and like in a good chocolate store, his manager wrote down the varieties alongside each row. (Never mind that smaller but not small plum squeezed in there where it could fit, we know what it is.)

I was curious about the Greengage plums listed on their site, but it wasn’t till I got home and found an article about their orchard that I realized there had been some right on that table the whole time and I’d skimmed right past them.

I’ll just have to go back. Twist my arm. We’ll just nibble on these first, shouldn’t take long at all.

For the record: carrots well roasted in extra-virgin olive oil, then add a bit of cherry sauce that I picked up at Andy’s Orchard last week? (Andy’s grows cherries but they sell Cherry Republic’s bottled topping.)

A certain tall man is officially a fan. Pretty please with cherries on top and all that.

So I had to go looking for their website and now I really want my baby Montmorency tree to hurry and grow up!

If only I had thought of it a day or two earlier I could have shared some of this with Ellen–and likely there would have been more. She, though, gave me a nectarine from her travels in the Central Valley and pointed out the tiny dimples: the farmer had told her the unusual rain striking the skin had done that.

So the story: I exchanged emails last winter with Andy Mariani, the owner of a well-loved orchard a ways south of here, and he was delighted to find someone who knew of and liked Loring peaches like he did.

I didn’t think we got enough chill hours for them to grow here. (But he’s in a slightly different subclimate.)

Yes he did have a few trees. Get back in touch with him come summer and he’d be glad to put some aside for me.

A tad late, I remembered all that and shot him off another note.

The market stand was sold out, he answered Thursday, but if I could come Friday they would be picking the very last few that morning. Maybe three pounds’ worth.

I don’t care if it’s just one single peach, I said, for my first Loring in thirty-eight years it’s worth the trip!

And so they managed to find ten peaches for me tucked among the leaves and set them aside. Michelle and I got there, and the woman at the counter asked, You’re Alison?

She offered samples of a Silk Road nectarine, too. I prefer peaches–but that was like no nectarine I’d ever tasted and would have been worth the trip down all on its own. I’d never had one run juice to my elbows before and I did not know they could have such an intense, interesting flavor–so some of those came home, too.

I did not get the name of the dappled, pretty, ripe, green–cherries? So they were. In almost-August. I’d never heard of such a thing.

We came home with our treasures and cut up our first Loring. That first picture is not a trick of the camera angle–that thing was 508 grams.

Michelle closed her eyes a moment and pronounced, Now that is a peach!

Relief! After all that buildup, it just couldn’t be a letdown, it couldn’t…and it wasn’t.

We took one to Timothy at the chocolate shop. “You didn’t go to Andy Mariani’s, did you? You did? Yes!” He shared it with his employees. Our favorite hot chocolates showed up at our elbows.

The one I later shared with Richard needed one more day to ripen perfectly but it had bruised slightly from all the juice and a little jostling and needed not to be wasted. He too pronounced it good, though I told him Michelle’s was even better.

At least I got to send Ellen off with homegrown Meyer lemons. She’ll just have to come back next July.

She sent me a picture and Richard sent me some from his phone and they’re too big to go here and I’ll try to shrink them tomorrow for you.

But let me just say that Ellen is absolutely as wonderful in person as I always knew she would be.

She’d had a huge drive from her trip to Fresno to make it here. The funny part is that at three and a half hours into it my doorbell rang and I opened it with You’re here!

And it was my next-door neighbor. And so Richard and I got to talk to her a little while and I was halfway walking her back over to her house when Ellen pulled up in front of it. And Ellen? That’s the neighbor who just missed being in the big tsunami in Phuket and who then spent a month driving a relief truck to stricken areas long after her vacation was supposed to be over. Because she could.

We had such a good time! She and Richard and I went out for chocolates and sandwiches at Timothy Adams, then dropped him off at home and headed for Purlescence.

I had no idea one of the regulars listens to Ellen and her twin sister Jan’s podcasts–she did quite a doubletake and went, Are you–are you–!

It was a treat to watch Ellen belong on the spot among my friends just like I’d felt with her as she’d stepped out of her car the first time. Heather got to tell her she’d knit a hat for the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign. Everybody introduced themselves.

It was late by Ellen’s time but she let me bring her back inside after the shop to dip some of the strawberries she’d bought us driving across the Central Valley into some sour cream and sugar as we three chatted some more. It was a struggle not to be selfish with her time. I am so glad she came.

And she brought nectarines and a melon and plums and tomatoes and good news about a good farmer who’s making a difference re water usage there.

Richard took pictures of the two of us….

Drying: a warm hat in half bamboo half pearl flecks. (My airport project a few weeks ago, finally blocked.)

Yet more zucchini to ditch somewhere on someone. Maybe I’ll take some to knit night tomorrow.

With Ellen. Twinset Ellen of Minnesota, who propelled the whole Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign, where she got about a hundred knitters together online, with India T of New Hampshire as our third organizer/cheerleader. The idea was to create a hand knit hat for every member of Congress to send them tangible testimony from their constituents that we wanted them to stop fighting and to sit down and do their jobs working together, and one House member actually referenced our campaign in a speech on the floor! He wanted us to succeed and that did us a ton of good. We felt heard.

We didn’t quite make it before the weather got too warm to consider wearing hats and people kind of gave out. But we got one for every Senator and at least half of the House and mostly coming from the members’ own districts.

It’s all her fault. I threw out a stray what if/if only and she went YES if, let’s *do* it!

A huge thank you to every one of you out there who knitted those.

She’ll be here. I get to finally meet her in person, and we’re going to Purlescence together. To say I. Can’t WAIT! does not begin to tell it.

Michelle had us over for homemade lemon meringue pie and sent us home with the rest and it was very, very good.

Looking at the overly full fridge, I put it at the back of the top above the fruit juice and milk that I knew wouldn’t be moved or touched for several days till the stuff in front would be used up. Knowingly, not a bright move, but I had cleared out the lower shelves a few days before and still there just wasn’t room for the height of that pouffy meringue.

This would do. Be careful, is all.

Tick…tick…tick….

Before I even had that fridge door open again all the way the entire right side of the top shelf dominoed over and threw itself down towards my feet. Lemon makes a great cleaner, so, hey, it was just being helpful, right? The sides, the drawers, the door shelves, the floor, my feet, my clothes, even somehow underneath the fridge. If it was possible within the realm of physics for pie to land or bounce there it did.

The most points of impact! Olympic gold! And the crowd goes wild. The Blobsledding champion!

Now that I know how heavenly mango flowers smell and how hard the local honeybees tried to get at my tree when the cover was still on it during chilly early mornings, when I found a source of mango honey today I immediately ordered some. I had often wondered if my tree had made any discernible difference to any of the backyard apiaries around here. If it did, the beekeepers could only guess at what the new secret ingredient is.

And now I wait to find out which was sweeter: the anticipation or the reality.

But honey, I gotta tell you, this is going to be good! (Will add link when….)

They let you fill out an order online a day or two ahead and pick it up, and I’ve thought many times that it certainly would make sense to go that route.

But twenty-five years of conditioning by having lupus says that today I can do this/tomorrow could be a complete train wreck. Run Go Do Now!

So yeah, spontaneous trips, yes, pre-orders, none yet. It’s life and I’m glad to have it.

Meringue with almond paste mixed in makes for the perfect crunchy texture while at the same time it doesn’t shatter in your face like a plain meringue, and then it has a fruit and almond or plain almond filling at the center. Chef’s Surprise. I’d been craving one for weeks.

And so yesterday in the early afternoon I called Copenhagen Bakery to see if they had any of those left, knowing that they tend to sell out early in the day and the chances weren’t great.

The voice on the phone wasn’t one I recognized. Which is kind of funny, the idea that I would have some idea of who works there, given that the place is a good twenty-five minutes away when the traffic is good. She said they had two there, still.

Oh good! (Thinking, then I can have my meringues and not overindulge, too.) I gave her my name and asked her to put them aside (because I know that they do that) and told her where I’d be driving from to get them so they wouldn’t think I wasn’t showing up. I would be right on my way, then.

One of the people behind the counter when I got there made a point of picking me out of the small crowd to offer to help. She was clearly the manager and she clearly had been waiting and looking for the person who had called, and yes, that was me.

Her shoulders and face fell as she apologized profusely. The two had just been sold and the other woman hadn’t bothered to check before promising them. She was SO sorry, she’d tried to call me to keep me from making such a trip, she knew I must be so disappointed. She was so sorry.

I pictured her in agony with the other woman, going, you didn’t get her phone number? And maybe getting a response of no, why would I ask for it? And then, Oh…

But she’d tried and I was grateful for that, and by taking personal responsibility for it and by wishing so hard she could make it right, that was enough: she made it right. There was nothing left to worry about. I simply looked around at All The Good Things there and told her it was okay–it freed me up to discover something new! Cool!

It was a treat to see her relax. She thanked me.

She told me that this cookie over here was almond paste… Well, hey, that’s close enough, and I asked for two. I found later she’d slipped me three. One of these, too, I said, and over here, what is this?

I found out just what she meant by hazelnut pastry later when I sliced the little thing open with Richard: a thin cookie layer enclosing hazelnut paste–hazelnut paste?!–chocolate mousse on top of that, dark chocolate enclosing the whole thing and a hazelnut topping it off. Wow.

That right there is a whole new reason to drive to Burlingame for way too many calories way too often and I never would have known if I’d gotten what I’d wanted. Wow that was good.

I’ll be back.

I’ll call ahead in the mornings.