An elderly friend needed a ride today and so I got to spend some time with Gail.

We talked gardening and trees a bit and she laughed as she remembered what her father had planted when she was a kid: a bitter almond tree and a sweet almond tree. She told me, The squirrels never touched the sweet almonds. Because of the bitter!

If they only knew, right?

I remember once when Robin discovered a chocolatier who did the most exquisite work. Reading her description was a good way to go on a chocolate torte baking binge if nothing else, and it was before Timothy Adams was available as a local remedy for such a keen oh-I-(quietly)-wish.

And then, you guessed it, a little while later there was a surprise box in the mail: they came in a delightful little hinged wooden box, so perfect in presentation in every way and then, oh wow! Definitely lived up to their descriptions.

She hadn’t wanted me to miss out.

There were two last plastic produce clamshells for the season on the Fuji tree last week guarding the goods from the squirrels, one at the upper right inside the fork in the dark branch here, you can see right where I picked, and one at the lower left corner. I opened the upper one Friday after a friend of ours did me a big favor with a physical task beyond my abilities. (I’ve started him a hat. He doesn’t know that yet.) He loves a good apple and to him it was the perfect thank you.

So I was standing where I took this photo from looking up right there into that part of the tree the day before Robin passed and there was no sign whatsoever that these blossoms were coming to be.

But I think I know now why I felt I needed to go back out there today and pick that very last apple of the year. Not tomorrow. Go see now. I did, staring in disbelief, and than ran for the camera.

Someone had sent me the most heavenly bouquet of apple flowers. In October.

I smiled at a shy, fussy baby at church today, playing peek-a-boo and I’m shyer than you are–no, I am! with him till he grinned. At last, he even let me hold him for a minute before almost-walking back to his mom.

He can manage two careful steps and hover unsteadily a moment and if he moves fast enough even three before going splat but that third, hurried one was always just too much to readjust his balance to in time. The arms go up, the bottom goes down.

Today. Such a brief snapshot of time. Tomorrow he’ll make it halfway across the room and fall into his daddy’s arms giggling, the next day he’ll really be walking and right after that he’ll be running, and then he’ll be off to college and his folks will suddenly have to learn not to buy Costco-sized bunches of bananas and to chop fewer onions. It took a lot of calories to get my older son to 6’9″.

But for today, this one was simply a tired baby boy who needed someone to smile at him, who needed a snuggle and who crowed in delight a little louder–okay, a lot louder–in church than his mommy quite wanted. (Oops. Sorry.) The whole room smiled around them both.

He was the gift my day had needed, and I am grateful.

This picture is of her face puckered up just before the laughter.

How do I do justice to all the love and all the memories. RobinM was not often in the comments because so often our conversation was already happening, and many a time she put up with my day’s blog post being a second draft of what she and I had already talked about.

We met through a knitting list long ago and occasionally emailed, and then more and more as we discovered more connections. She lived so close to where I grew up that when I said the name of the street in Maryland, she went, Oh! Which house?

And when she found out where I live now, she exclaimed that she’d once lived within view of my street here, in a home she would later point out to me. Small world.

Then her husband became ill and our conversations became a daily, ongoing thing.

The night he died in hospice care at home, she sat down at the computer to let me know the news. She has missed him deeply ever since, and from time to time has mentioned how she felt guided by him still, that whenever she wanted to know the right thing to do she thought about what he would say–and that when she did, he never steered her wrong.

I tried to be a comfort and a friend and so many times now she has been a better one to me and she grew into a very dear part of my life. With her brother living here and my family (for a time) still back there, we were able to get together in person every year or two.

She marveled, my first time at her house, that her dog, a Westie rescue and a shy dog at the time whom she said had never warmed up to any strangers immediately, he took to me as if we’d been best friends forever and I felt the same, sweet puppy, appreciative of his compliment; at the last he put his head down in my lap with a happy sigh and fell asleep.

“He never does that!” She was both astonished and admiring.

And I found I adored her in person as well.

That was about ten years ago.

She caught pneumonia recently, and in someone fifteen years older than me this is not a good thing. When things didn’t seem to be going well, I urged her to call her doctor, but instead she went to the ER, probably a better idea. They sent her home, and she seemed to feel like been there settled that. But from there on out she was suddenly sounding very different, just short notes, a sentence or two, and it felt from my end as if she could barely get the breath to sit up and type.

Then came a note asking if purple swollen feet were normal. For her not to be able to think clearly, or at least that’s how it sounded, was a huge change, and with a symptom like that, I tried not to sound as alarmed as I felt as I told her that congestive heart failure or kidney failure can cause those. (She knew I had gone through temporary bouts of both and could speak to the subject.)

I wondered whether to call her brother. She called her daughter and son-in-law. They had quite the drive but they came right away.

I got up this morning and ran to the computer first thing, highly aware of our three-hour time difference, to see if there were any news. The last message had been from Robin in the ER several days ago, waiting for a room to be checked into. Cardiac, tests were being run, was all she said.

And then nothing. I hoped it was that she simply didn’t have a device with her that she could respond from and I knew the hospital wouldn’t give me her room number to put a call through.

There it was, waiting: a mixture of grieving and wistfulness and love and one last bit of hope. And so her daughter had my email address.

Within the hour she was sending a second note and the news was different this time. But the love, it felt only stronger.

She told me a little of what it had been like to be at her mother’s side in her last few moments, a story that is hers to tell, and I can only hope I do right by my own mother like that come the day.

And just like her mother: she had sat down shortly after her unfathomable loss to let me of all people know her family’s news. I cannot begin to say how much that means to me.

……

My own daughter drove over briefly to give me a big hug.

At the last, opening the fridge at 5:00, one of us simply had to go do the grocery shopping. It felt just too strange. Richard wasn’t feeling well so I said I would.

I hadn’t been to Costco in weeks. I wondered whether I would run into someone I knew and how I would do when it was all just so soon.

Turns out I did, though, and it was a couple my kids knew well when they were teens. They were in the middle of selling their house and moving away and were glad to get to let me know and since they had enough on their plate it was easy to smile and cheer them on and just be glad we’d gotten to see each other. Serendipity.

And so I almost made it through.

I found myself turning and turning and threading my way down aisles I don’t normally go through to get towards the front and was quite surprised to find myself behind a line with only two people ahead. On a Saturday near closing? How does that happen?

The clerk turned my direction a moment and suddenly I saw who it was. Oh cool: he’s such a nice guy. I really had lucked out.

When I was up, he looked me in the eye and told me it was good to see me and that it had been awhile. (He noticed?!) “And how is your day today?”

It wasn’t a throwaway line; he clearly meant it, and as his hands passed the groceries across the scanner, that word ‘today’ and the complete caring in his demeanor just did me in.

“It’s been fine…” was all I meant to say, and then, “except that one of my best friends died this morning.”

A long, quiet, Oooh escaped him. He grieved.

She had had pneumonia, I explained quickly, not wanting to hold up the line behind me but not wanting to leave this good man unhappy, And she hadn’t been sounding like herself. Her daughter drove four hours with her husband to be by her mother’s side and took her to the hospital. Her heart gave out this morning. Her daughter was right there with her. She was not alone.

That mattered to him. I thanked him and hoped out loud for him to have a good day.

He handed me my receipt just so such that three of his large fingers closed gently over mine for one, two heartbeats, as we saw each other eye to eye. Those thanks went both ways.

And I left feeling like, I don’t need to write to Robin to tell her that or to miss being able to. She already knows, right now. She might even have steered me to that man’s line where he was all ready to truly hear.

And to be fully present.

At knit night tonight I very nearly finished the first hat out of that so-soft Eco Duo. I eyed the bin, my fingers wanting to play with more.

And I said to Sandi: You remember putting that note on Facebook about this being on sale this week?

Yeah?

And I dashed right in and got some. And then all week long I’ve had the day wrong because, y’know, Purlescence is Thursday.

She laughed.

I almost missed tonight because I was sure it was Friday!

I was looking for a particular Baby Alpaca Silk Petite from Lisa Souza in my stash….

And stumbled across a forgotten ziploc. A dk-weight silk shawl in a (sold out) color Colourmart2.com called Claireberry.

I had put this down to go knit for a nephew’s fiancee, and then another project for someone else, and then another one, and having been unsure how to finish this one I never quite had and then I’d simply forgotten it.

Pulling gently from neck edge to needle to see, it seemed pretty long as it was. Six long but simple rows and call it done, and that, my friends, is how you pull off a whole ‘nother lace shawl in just one day to try to impress your blog. It’s blocking and I’m waiting for it to hurry up and dry.

Last night’s shawl having nicely cleared the spot for it.

Where’s that BASP? I thought I knew right where…. Well, while I’m waiting on that I got a thousand-plus yards of Lisa’s silk wound up and five hundred of Karida’s super soft dk Penthouse. All ready to go in sweet touch-me perfection.

Cast on!

Amazing how much knitting you can get done in one day when you want to get past the fiddly stuff to the mindless part by knit night time. And I did!

I was wrong the other day. It wasn’t rubber from the plate frames, they were plastic, the rubbery grit was maybe road dust? Tire particles, I think. Whatever, still, I tossed the old ones from both cars. Who needs to advertise car dealerships?

The lady at the DMV was right: the car does look better with frames around the plates.

And so at knit night tonight, I half-jokingly, sure I was being outlandish, asked if they sold any that had, y’know, a knitting theme or something.

Sure! Okay if it says I’d rather be knitting above and Purlescence below?

Me, quite surprised: Sure!

How many do you need?

Two?

Got’em, and Greg went into the storeroom and to get one for someone else at the table and came back with them.

Me: How much?

Pamela (new employee, old friend): Free, they’re free advertising for the shop.

Me: But but but. Thank you! Cool!

And then I came home with them.

A certain someone grinned, rolled his eyes in great exaggeration, saying, I drive that car, too–and he patiently put up with me.

Well hey, I was just opening a discussion here. His and hers. We need to find/have made a ham radio one for you to go with mine for me, right?

He’s thinking about what he might like his to say. I think it might be a good idea for me to either take my second one back or find someone else who would really like one too.

(Mango tree today, lowest, next branch up, and top, rollover notes for details.)

It was a bit of an adventure but it is done: the van is sold and gone.

My next-door neighbor happened to be outside as a crew of strangers were soaping and hosing it down after the grand trek to the DMV and were making it beautiful (wow, they really did–I had no idea it could still look that nice) and I got to tell them how happy I was that it was going to a new family that would make good use of it again, as she added her enthusiasm to the idea. It had served us well.

It felt surprisingly difficult in those last few seconds to watch it being driven away. If I ever see it again on the road, I won’t even know–it’ll have plates (I think it already does) that it never had with us.

How do we get so attached to something so transitory and meaningless, something of no life. And the only answer is because my kids grew up with it.

The neighbor asked what we were replacing it with; I laughed and said, What we are or what I wish? What we are, probably (and I motioned zero). For now, anyway. Too many home repairs to do.

Now, a Tesla. If it were a Tesla I could definitely understand getting too attached to that. The X-model SUV as long as I’m totally dreaming.

Maybe it’s just as well we’ve got a humble little nine-year-old Prius. It’s a good little car and it serves the two of us well.

So what would you do with a volunteer tomato taking over the yard, flowering month after month but never setting a single fruit while the other tomatoes do? Keep waiting? Rip it out before it takes any more nutrients from the cherry tree above?

So that’s what was on my mind as I stepped out the door to start the Tuesday watering.

I’d noticed the little junco for a few days now.

Clearly I wasn’t the only one.

There it was on the box again, right next to me as I stepped onto the patio. With one eye gone and the other warily watching the sky, it didn’t take off till after I went past it and turned back again.

That post yesterday about being the boss of this place?

There, up on the telephone wire. I mentally apologized to the Cooper’s hawk for wrecking his breakfast and quickly got back in the house and out of the way.

He stayed there patiently another minute or so, feathers unruffled but a sure thing gone.

For now.

I finished the watering tonight and went off to the first night of a new knitting group; Alex found herself with a copy of my lace shawls book as a thank you. May there be many happy memories there to come.

The mango tree’s latest, to left and right, including that cluster of four that was almost upright yesterday and sideways today and already starting to swoop up again at the ends tonight, just doing what mango branches do. (For scale, those are tomato leaves in the background.)

So what I had expected to post about yesterday was that an old friend from back home showed me a picture of her toy raven for her team: she measured it 9″ beak to tail and asked if I might make it a Baltimore Ravens scarf so it could be properly attired. Maybe a half inch to an inch wide and a foot long?

Of course I would! (Oh if only all knitting requests could be that easy!)

I googled the colors and thought, bright gold and deep dark bright purple? Even with the size of my stash, do I have those at all? I wondered how long it would take to beg a yard or two from friends’ remnants because I was pretty sure I would need to. Or to buy them.

And then I found it: the bag that held what hadn’t been knitted up yet of the yarn that Melinda at Tess Designer Yarns had completely surprised me with a couple months ago. I wondered if she’d wondered why she was doing it, but she’d put in a half ounce each of worsted-weight soft wool in, you guessed it, exactly the shades of gold and purple I would later be looking for. Neither of us had any way to possibly know. I both laughed and looked at it a little bug-eyed–they were so exactly perfect. Wow. Thank you, Melinda!

The green tape measure had just verified that it was 12″ long, perfect, and I was halfway through that little bird’s quick bit of scarf and hoping to beat the mailman when the doorbell rang yesterday and I threw it down on the footrest to run go answer. This is the picture I took a few hours later after I came back from all that sudden whirlwind.

Kinda mango branch shaped there, isn’t it? 

Photo courtesy of my son from Saturday.

And on a different note. Wow, that was mid-July. Didn’t realize it had been so long.

Okay, so, this morning I got up thinking it would be a great day to go to Copenhagen Bakery in Burlingame: I could drop Richard off at work and go straight there.

With the next thought being a glance upwards at the skylight, thinking, are you kidding me?

It drizzled off and on all day yesterday and today started off with just a little of that–the roads are always oilslicked after an early-season rain here.

And yet the thought was both persistent and happy. Enough to make me pay attention to it and take stock.

Did either of us need the calories? Certainly not. Was I craving my favorites of theirs? Oh heck, always a little bit but nothing out of the ordinary, so, no, not really. Would I personally be just as happy if I didn’t go? Sure. It’s a trek. If I were going to Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco too, maybe I could combine the trips and justify both but that wasn’t in the plan either. (More on that tomorrow, probably.)

I said a prayer: is there something I don’t know about, some reason I should go? Again and again, I felt, You Should Go. Well alright then, if that is to be, and if there’s a reason for it, I certainly can’t know and I’m very good at being too human; please help me be my best self to clear the way open for whatever’s and whoever’s supposed to happen.

On impulse coming away from Richard’s office I found myself turning towards this freeway rather than that. Was I sure I knew how to get there that way? Not at all. I almost did a U-turn but found myself relentlessly going thataway. Huh, well, good luck then.

280 is a far prettier drive with much less traffic anyway. Less stressful.

There was a huge cloudburst that lasted about twenty seconds, then almost dry, then a lesser shorter cloudburst and from there on out it was only a few random drops. Not too bad.

I realized pretty quickly, as I wondered if that had been my exit, that this was going to be even more guesswork than I’d thought. Note that GPS is for people who can hear it clearly in a noisy car–I’m a little too conditioned towards not trying it. I ended up meandering a bit after taking an exit that was actually one too early, trying to find my way downhill towards town. Overcorrected on the sense of direction, backtracked, took my time sweet time and finally, I got there. I think I added at least fifteen minutes to the trip.

The manager from last time? She was nowhere in sight. The woman who’d messed up last time? I do believe that was her helping me. I was wearing the same sunhat, using the same cane, and we had a fun time going back and forth: if I was going to make a trek like and get lost like I did than I was going to get enough fun stuff to make it worth it all. Hazelnut mousse pastry? Yes please. Raspberry? I’ll have to try it.

She winced at that road trip description and I laughed it off with, “I got to explore!”

The chef’s surprises. They freeze well. There were actually four of my favorite filled almond meringue danishes left this time–I know they sell out early in the day every day. “Are those all there are?”

“Yes.”

“Mine,” and we both cracked up, and I thought, It WAS you! And you do have it this time. Cool. This was so much better an experience to leave her with.

Carrying that great sense of goodwill along on my way out, there was a man maybe ten years older than me seated at a tiny table, talking quietly into his cellphone and then staring into space and looking like the whole world was on his shoulders in a way that suddenly made my heart reach out to him. I could just picture my Richard looking like that when I was in the hospital, though I cannot know, here, what….

I found myself stopping a moment and glancing at my cane and then at his very nice, hand carved one that had seen some use but was still quite a work of art, making the visual connection, then nodding quietly with a smile, *Nice* cane!

A touch of pride, a sense that someone had noticed him in that moment when he’d so much needed not to be alone: he looked up into my eyes and he seemed to suddenly melt, letting go in some inner relief. I don’t quite know how to describe it but I felt it.

Another nod in goodbye and I was out into the sunlight heading quickly for my car. Grateful. Wondering.

So much I don’t know. But I’m so glad I went and that I got there when I did.

And look at it now. A weekend ago it was shorter than the stake and all those groups of new leaves were each just one fingernail-sized dormant-looking bud at the branch ends. I suddenly have a lot more mango tree.

Meantime, I grabbed Michelle and treated her to chocolate at our favorite shop to share pictures from our trip and catch up a bit. We walked in and suddenly there were dairy-free truffles created on the spot just for her. In an allergic world where food in public can be a difficult thing, I love how good they are at making her at home.

Someday, when they’re not too busy (but I’m glad their shop is busy), I’ll ask the owners about the timing of tipping that top point. They’re the only people I know who once grew a mango tree.

Oh wait, of course! I take that back: Dani grew up with one. In India, though, so not the same climate. Still…

So we had a guy out to talk about our solar panels. His company was offering something that I don’t think existed when we installed ours: an inverter that separates out each panel, so that if one gets shaded the others still work.

Ours is an all-or-nothing system and there’s a redwood next door, so it was definitely worth getting a quote to replace that part.

When all that was done he was interested in asking about the fruit trees, and it being early evening I walked back out there with him and Richard. He wanted to know what everything was.

“A mango?!” He thought that was so cool.

Cherries, there and there, mandarins, there and there. “Peaches for June July August September,” I said, pointing one two three four, noting that the biggest was only planted in February but it was standard root stock vs the semi-dwarfs and also had better sun.

A few more steps, then, “That lemon tree looks so healthy,” he said, admiring how loaded its branches were with small green fruit. He reached up to touch one. “Meyers are sweeter, right?”

“Yes, they’ve got some tangerine in their parentage.”

“Wow, you guys could open a fruit stand with all that!”

Except… And then he told us about his plum tree, how the squirrels bit into his plums and then threw them down without finishing and made a huge mess he was having to clean up–with the implied thought of, and they don’t even leave me any.

We know how that goes.

It was clear he’d wished for more fruit trees if it weren’t for that. And we knew how that goes, too.

We were standing in front of my plum tree as he mentioned this and I pointed out the clamshells on the apple next to it and why. I told him about the raccoon that ate the plastic (no shards on the ground anywhere), ate the apple, and then never touched another clamshell again, not last year nor this nor any possible descendant of theirs. It had worked.

“Oh so that’s why…” (Yeah, I know they look pretty. Not. But hey it works!)

And over there… “I *love* figs!”

I told him mine was in a pot to keep the shallow roots from causing damage.

He was clearly eager to learn more. It was great fun. I think some nursery is about to make a sale.

I put my knitting down and went out a moment…

And picked the first ripe Fuji apples of the season. There were three in this cluster, and yes I should have thinned them to one but I had so few this year that I just let them be for the most part.

The guy who’d helped me prune the thing back last winter cut off most of the fruiting wood. Other than asking him not to do that this year I really can’t complain because he did a fabulous job of shaping the tree, now that the weed eucalyptuses that had been shading it were gone, so that it recovered amazingly well and grew back towards the space they had taken over and it became a nicely shaped tree again. I did not know that was possible in a single season. But it meant passing up on most of a year’s crop.

Richard and I shared the biggest one and it reminded me why I chose that variety twenty-something years ago. Straight off the tree, they are fabulous.

They would have gotten redder had I taken their clamshells off and maybe trimmed back a few leaves and let more of the sun hit them directly, but they would have been gone in a minute. This year, for all the critters’ desperation in the drought, they have not been trying to steal fruit out of those covers. The birds did peck as best they could through the small air holes in the plastic but could only leave just the tiniest marks and that was that.

Bowl by my good friends Mel and Kris. Apples by sun, water (not too much!) and love.

When our 84-year-old friend Shirley passed away a week ago I wondered when or if we would ever see her kids again, now that their folks were gone.

The youngest showed up at our church today, even though it was an hour’s drive. We had a good chat.

His older brother was two and a half hours away from his home yesterday when we randomly ran into him in Oakland. Instant joy.

It was so good to see those two. And even when it’s been decades when you see an old friend, you pick up right where you left off as if there had been no time between, you just have all the more to talk about as you catch up.

I’m sitting here thinking of several old friends who really could use a vacation to California. Hint hint.