Walking the grandkids to their car yesterday, I pointed out the stick-with-flowers tree and said, “That’s an apple.”

Parker, suddenly thrilled, did a little dance: “I LOVE apples!!!” (I like to think this helped start it all…)

Hugs all around, carseats were buckled, our son started to drive away….

“STOP!”

Daddy stopped.

Parker had almost forgotten! He’d been saving something for us, Grampa, come here!

My husband, knowing they were in a hurry to get to their Great Grandma M’s big dinner, dashed up to see what was going on.

He needed to share: “These are for you and Gramma!”

The phone rang. Then the doorbell did. Surprise!

My daughter-in-law’s mom’s large family was having a reunion this weekend and Great Grandma lives maybe a mile from us. The kids didn’t tell us they were coming because the way things were scheduled they weren’t sure they could get away for a moment. But they couldn’t not come…!

Maddy was entranced by the birds. The doves ambled off to the grass as she approached the window but the finches weren’t leaving that feeder.

Parker found the tennis racquet-shaped bug zapper that was behind the toy basket because, um, we weren’t quite child-proofed just then. No harm.

Hudson showed me how to turn the tractor on so it would make tractor-y noises.

I love this last photo. Baby photo, meet In Real Life little boy. Even if it is his brother.

The Tangy Green Columnar from two angles. Most apples don’t need a pollinator but it does, and so the Yellow Transparent gave up a twig with the same stages of blooming this evening.

Meantime, in politics…

Time Magazine did a photo shoot with the Republican candidate (his unmentionable name deleted) with a Bald Eagle for their cover–it was only later that they released the footage of the eagle starting to attack him as he rears back and away. (Scroll down slightly to the GIF to skip the ad in the video.)

A video that’s a lot more fun: in the middle of a large campaign rally today, a Pine Siskin flies to Bernie Sanders’ “A future to believe in” sign and, resting on that perch, turns its head to get a good look at the candidate. At 56 seconds in, it flies  towards Bernie himself before veering upwards in no particular hurry, not having minded the sounds of the crowd in any of this. (And I have seen how they zoom away when a hawk arrives. That one was not afraid.)

I love Bernie’s delight as he stops right there to take in and appreciate what life has suddenly brought him, his laugh for the sheer joy of it.

I was pulling weeds tonight just a few feet from the patio when an Oregon junco flew in beside me. A Bewick’s wren came from the other direction and joined in.

Wild things know.

Thirty-one weeks, thirty-two weeks, hang in there, baby…

She made it to thirty-three weeks. When my nephew’s wife first went into labor the doctors told the parents that every day in utero was a week the baby wouldn’t have to spend in the NICU, so getting that far was a huge blessing.

I packed a not-tiny-enough outfit with an adorable pair of baby socks knitted by my friend Susan into a box last Friday (I wish I’d thought to take a picture of them) and sent it off to my sister-in-law; the new parents were supposed to be moving near her about the time labor had first unexpectedly started and I didn’t want it to get lost between the mailman and the new place.

Their daughter/her granddaughter arrived Tuesday. There is an adorable picture that is not mine to share of her looking up at her mother with wide open, soft eyes. She is a beautiful baby.

Our niece was discharged today with the surprise of a newly-arrived box to open.

The baby is doing very well, all things considered. Breathing on her own. Might be able to eat on her own soon, too.

The handknit socks. That’s what got exclaimed over. Susan had made these beautiful socks for their baby, and on the day they had to go home without her yet it helped.

So I was doing my taxes, so close to that coming relief at being done–when the program choked and crashed the computer and when I rebooted, everything was gone. But I’d…hit…save….!

My macular distortion from a small tear at the back of each eye is such that focusing intensely on tiny objects like a line of numbers on a page makes them squiggly, as if someone had crumpled up a paper and not smoothed it back out yet.

Oh well. I reentered the whole thing (it did go a lot faster the second time) but with Richard home now, backing me up on reading those numbers correctly as I typed. I think this time I did manage to save most of it to the program itself before I hit that same endless spinning “Calculating…” He looked it over and went, Huh.

Tomorrow (she said, trying to tamp down the aggravation) I tackle it again. Fresh eyes.

And then I thought of the day’s news from Brussels and wondered what on earth I had to complain about. One of the Americans who was injured was a Mormon missionary from Utah who could easily be a distant cousin with that name Wells, not that it matters: every good person who aches deeply at such terrible things done to the innocent–we belong to each other from everywhere around the world no matter who we are or where we come from. We want to be the caring arms right there in person reaching out to those who are hurt, to somehow make it better by our sheer presence and will. If only.

Acts of terror only bring that love out into the open. We will always be more powerful.

A late-season cold and rainy day. (It’s supposed to hit 39 tonight.)

We really need those. (Except for that last part. Brrr.)

I went outside well towards dark with a cupful of grass seed, sprinkling everywhere I’d cleared the weeds out from. Glancing up at the trees, if they don’t see me they can’t immediately snatch it all up and maybe they won’t even notice tomorrow.

Did you just guffaw at that like we did? But still–the ground is damp, the only question is what will grow as a result so we might as well try for a few survivors.

Now the only question is how many different species of birds we will wake up to out there in the morning.

(Nope, still just white buds on the English Morello but I’ve got more flowers on the Stella cherry for you.)

We were the parents of two children under four years old and a third was on the way come the next spring. We had moved into our first house from a series of furnished apartments over our young marriage–we had basically nothing.

And so one crisp fall Saturday we went off to some place off thataway to buy a can of finish and not one but two cheap plain pine dressers for our little ones, a little do-it-yourself-ing ahead that would make them really ours (and a little more respectable). It took some doing to squeeze them home in our old Toyota wagon behind the two car seats.

Since I was pregnant, Richard took it upon himself to apply a finish to those on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And I’ll never forget, because the next morning, after a night of being utterly unable to sleep for the severity of a headache–and headaches for me were a rare thing–and when our two little ones were up all night anyway throwing up, and then finally Richard threw up–in the morning, after my collapsing by the side of the bed for the pain but coming to when I hit the floor, unable to stand, Richard was asking into the phone if this could be a reaction to that pungent wood finish wafting up the stairs. It was November. You don’t open the windows in New Hampshire in November.

Or, since we had eaten leftovers, the stuffing had been left out too long and too warm Thursday. Food poisoning?

The answer was a complete and total surprise: the doctor asked, Do you have a coal-burning stove?

Yes, and we had used it for the first time the day before.

The second thing he said was, since he had declared us to have carbon monoxide poisoning, Can you drive yourselves to the hospital? (There was no 911 service in that town at that time, just Sister So-and-So from church with her trusty snow-worthy Suburu wagon, ready and willing to transport anyone who needed it as her act of service of the day. I am told there is an actual ambulance now.)

Me, no way, but somehow Richard managed it. When they sampled his blood they came back wide-eyed and asked, How?!

He was taking care of his family. He had to make it. So he did.

We moved a lot of stuff around today to make way for the furniture Michelle needed to temporarily store here and now that’s all done.

There is this one old pine dresser that’s been plastered in little-kid stickers for a very long time, an art project when Mommy wasn’t looking. It hasn’t been in her room in a long time and now there’s no longer space for it anywhere at all.

And I’m torn between, we finally get to get rid of it (but let’s scrub those off first), and, there’s a bit of history to that thing that nobody else could know or would even want to know. My kids lived to stick those stickers on. And that dresser was innocent all along.

We had stake conference today, which is when a group (i.e. a stake) of wards (i.e. congregations) all come together for a really big joint meeting. Happens twice a year.

Parking is a bit of a zoo and it lets out at noon: a bad time sun-wise for a lupus patient to have to take a long walk, and so as is our usual we decided to get there about forty minutes early.

And as is our usual I brought something to work on before the meeting started, the cowl I’d begun right before we’d left for Salinas yesterday. I was quietly working away on it when the stake president walked by, shook our hands, pointed to the project in my hands and said, We’re going to be talking about that.

Knitting??

Knitting.

Okay, this I wanted to hear.

He spoke last in the two-hour meeting and in the course of his talk he told the tale, sharing a few more details with me afterwards, knowing I’d be interested. (Not so much so as to give away any hint of who it might have been; he simply chuckled fondly when I eagerly offered to share yarn or at least my sources of the good stuff. I’m sure if she wants to know, he’ll make sure she finds me.)

A woman had come to him for counseling. She had had some experiences that had left her struggling with an unwanted sense of bitterness. She had come to him seeking a blessing.

And after hearing her out, he offered up that prayer with her.

And in that prayer he found himself, quite to his surprise, telling her she needed to knit.

That was it. Just, she needed to knit.

I asked him afterwards, Was she someone who used to and her hands had bothered her and she was hoping for healing? Or…?

No, he smiled at me, she never had. This was new.

Now, as he said to the congregation, My mother doesn’t really knit. My wife and sister don’t really knit, I mean, they have, but they don’t… And my daughter has, a little. (He was struggling to describe a Knitter with a capital K without having really experienced one personally, but he knew there were such people and that those who were would instantly understand, and probably everybody else who knows a real Knitter. Or Crocheter for that matter.)

I asked him, So did she?!

Oh, yes! And he told me how she’d made things for all her friends and had created so much happiness around her by it. As he said it, he knew that I would know exactly what that would be like. Even though he doesn’t really know me.

But he knows that I knit, and he understood.

I was walking out the door yesterday to get Richard and found the mail had just been delivered.

Including a package that was addressed to the woman four doors down.

It was raining and I didn’t want to be late, so rather than run down there and back I simply pulled my car in front of her house and rang the doorbell. No answer. Huh. Do I put it in the slot on the garage? Is that where it usually goes? Would she find it if I put it by the door? Would she find it on the floor in there if she always goes in and out through her garage from her car? (Which she does. To those reading this and looking surprised, I know: a Californian who actually uses her garage for her car. She’s the only one I know who does.)

Eh, keep it simple, the door, it’s out of the rain–while the mailman sat in his truck directly across the street from my car, avoiding eye contact.

I sent her off a note this morning telling her why her package was where it was if that was a weird place for it to be.

She emailed back a got it, thanks–and said she’d seen it when she’d come home from the central coast at eight last night: returning home from going to meet her first great grandchild. In pride and great joy she told me his name and she said being a great grandma was the best!!! with three exclamation points.

I might not even have known till the next Labor Day block party. Instead, because the mailman was in a little too much of a hurry to get out of the rain, my sweet neighbor got a chance to share just how very happy she was and I got to celebrate with her.

Perfect. I’m going to thank him next time I see him.

(The photo angle makes the beak look a little smaller than it is.)

Coming out of Los Gatos Birdwatcher, my fob, which unlocks the car as you approach, was dead and my hands were full–I had to put everything down to pull the small key out of it, a task that requires adept fingernailing on the little slider thingy. And I did not want to damage the most fragile item in my hands. Argh.

The person helping carry the 20 lb bag of birdseed was fine with waiting however long it took me, just very patient, even though I knew the store was full of more customers waiting to be checked out than I think I’d ever seen when it wasn’t Christmastime.

Got in the car. Thanked the woman, who smiled, hoisted the big bag in and was gone.

Wait. No fob. Just the key in my hand, which only works on the door; you have to put it back into the fob to start the car.

Got out, found it, got in, had it in my hand…and again it had vanished. I hadn’t even felt it slip. I flashed back to my mom’s story of doing this with her car key when I was a teen waiting for her to pick me up from a piano lesson…for an hour…. (But that’s how she got back the piano bench cover she’d been needlepointing for her mom for a full year, with only maybe an inch of fabric left to do, when it suddenly hit her she’d gone through her knitting bag all. these. times. and–racing back to that grocery store!–so it was all good.)

No rescue-the-needlepoint story here to excuse my klutziness though. I was out and looking around the passenger side of my parking space when some young men, late teens, maybe early 20s started to pull into the spot by mine (did it somehow fall under my car?), but rather than being annoyed at me for making them wait a moment the driver opened his door asking, Are you looking for something? In a tone of, May I help you with your search?

Good people are everywhere.

I finally found my fob again and was off. Phew!

And suddenly realized, wait: no bag. That crow is just sitting on the back seat. What if the real ones see it when I pull into the driveway? I should pull over between here and home and cover it, I could have retaliatory corvids pulling off the rubber from the wiper blades for years! Which happened to the U of WA professor after capturing and studying his real crow.

I didn’t though, but when I got home I leaned over it, hoping to block any view from the redwood next to the driveway they like to perch in, took my sweater off and wrapped it around and carried my prize oh so carefully inside.

Would it work for ravens too? I’d wondered to the woman running the shop.

They’re not communal, she mused; I don’t know.

On second thought, though, it occurs to me, what if a raven tries to eat it? Mmm, tasty. Not. I guess then it would just look more dead?

But I am really grateful to that bird store for such a nature-friendly idea for keeping the crows from raiding my fruit trees, not to mention the warning not to be seen by them at it. They so deserved that sale.

I made sure not to put it where it could be seen through any window from any angle. I am having to resist putting it out there tonight. I think I want to wait till the cherries, now in early bud, start to look edible.

Right?

Rain rain rain rain rain, much of it in fierce sideways gusts, 1.3″ of it today, wonderful wonderful (cold dark go get a warmer sweater) rain.

My English Morello tart cherry early this morning, responding to all the lovely water and with no sign of Japanese beetle damage whatsoever. We are winning that battle (link to how) this year. And that was the last time I dared take an exposed iPhone outside.

The dishwasher that was backed up last night that I hoped I’d gotten going didn’t stay going. But the sink is just fine…! Crud.

That thing at the back of the fridge?

See, after twenty-six years of lupus and Crohn’s, when I have a good day after a string of bad, when there’s a task or even a fun thing pulling at me I do it while I can, even when I know I’m overdoing. “Today I can do this” is my stock inner phrase and these had to be done. Go.

I cleaned the fridge. The dishes (well, most of the dishes. I can only stand in place so long but I got two good tries out of it.) The laundry, because they were predicting falling trees and power outages with our wind advisory and flash flood warnings–and sheets and fevers and yeah. Meantime, Richard braved it out there, his oversized umbrella flipping inside out several times in the short steps from car to doors as he hunter-gathered into the wilds.

And I made good headway on my new project. I mean, isn’t it, like, a rule that you have to knit and watch the rain?

Coopernicus showed up on the telephone wires, feathers being blown backwards from time to time, rousing and shaking off the deluge. He people watched back for a bit. I could see his beak open as he commented an aside to the unseen.

We’re good for a few days now. My stars, (glancing up), it’s 11:08. G’night.

More energy, less fever. Yay! Missing a mini-family reunion, not so yay, but sometimes you just don’t get to do what you wish you could do. Those flying home to Texas and Hawaii can wave hi from afar with me.

Well maybe at least I could snap a nice picture, and so I went outside when the sky took a break. Love love love how this one came out. And while I was snapping away I glanced up into the gray sky, anticipating more rain warning me to bug out of there, to see instead two hawks air-dancing above and I stopped and I watched them court till they were out of sight and away.

Coopernicus and his mate, no doubt, and their appearance broke through my own little cloud as I wished them a successful season rearing a new family.

The anticipated, delayed rain had finally begun today after a drought-dry February.

Rather than a thousand petals all over the ground, Adele’s peach simply bloomed all the more.

We were watching the Republican debate tonight. Marco Rubio’s voice was getting hoarser and hoarser and he looked like he’d felt better (but then it’s easy for me to think that way when I’ve been waking up with a stiff fever all week, gradually settling mostly down over the course of each day.) He was less, if I dare use the word Trump has politicized, energetic.

So. At the end, John Kasich walked across the front of the stage to go shake Rubio’s hand at the other end. Trump, though, standing right next to Rubio, totally beat him to it.

I guffawed at what happened next: so Rubio shook Trump’s hand, but then as Rubio turned to Kasich there was a moment’s briefest exchange between the two men and Rubio, with Kasich moving a split second behind in kind, bent their arms and reached their elbows towards each other.

I so recognized that. I was on a chemo drug for six and a half years. I always shook elbows. I still do sometimes (and should, given my immune train wreck.)

Trump would have found a way to twist such a gesture into an insult and a rebuke of his opponent and he would never have understood doing something that might convey the slightest whiff of vulnerability. In front of the cameras! Trump got the ordinary handshake he wanted.

Kasich and Rubio exchanged smiles and comraderie in their moment while Rubio was looking out for the other guy, hoping to protect Kasich from his germs. I’m no fan of Rubio for many reasons and would never vote for him. But I have to say, that split-second decision spoke well of him.

Rain is coming, nine days of it, after a mostly-dry February. Hallelujah.

Which also means that since I was feeling a lot better and the time was very short, I spent about two hours yesterday yanking out hundreds of weeds by the roots before that water lets them re-anchor. Before, the plants weren’t big enough to reliably pull clear to the taproot, the leaves would just tear off. I’d tried.

Okay, the answer to that is to use a trowel but that’s harder on my knitting hands.

I got the huge yard-trimmings bin half full and snapped this photo before calling it a night. I’d made decent progress, at least.

And then I spent today feverish and achy and mostly asleep and I just barely managed to get fluids down–the Crohn’s wanted in on the fun. Speaking of which, if the MAP vaccine currently in trial succeeds I am going to be first in line the first day and it would be SO cool to have a cure!

Anyway, re the germ relapse, I totally earned it but I’m still glad I got those weeds out. Some had already started to grow their stabby Hades heels.

This was the very nearly bare branch at the back in yesterday’s picture–we’re up to six baby figs tonight with the tree sprouting everywhere now.

Meantime.

We were in the longest and I mean longest line at Trader Joe’s. Ten minutes it didn’t move, and the others weren’t much better.

I gave a dad with an antsy little girl a finger puppet–and only afterwards realized she had a hospital bracelet on her wrist. She needed it all the more, then.

I had time to exclaim to the woman standing next to me over her purse, which was clearly hand knit and hand felted with inner and outer pockets (that takes skill in the felting process), a flap, a full lining sewn in, she showed me–just a beautiful piece of handiwork. Had she made it?

Oh she wished! But she did knit; her friend had made this.

Did you go to Stitches last weekend? I asked her, sure of my answer–I mean, this local, how could she not have, right? Where we were standing was less than ten miles from the venue.

The look on her face! Like she was almost afraid to ask what she’d missed out on but oh goodness she HAD to know! A hesitant, No… What’s that?

About a hundred fifty to two hundred vendors and ten thousand knitters at the Santa Clara Convention Center. People fly in from all over for it.

Sacramento? she asked. (As in, far enough away she didn’t have to regret missing it?)

Santa Clara. At the Convention Center.

There was both profound regret and a deep excitement in her voice now. She hadn’t seen any advertisements. I wondered in return if you had to know by word of mouth, more or less? Next year, she said. She was going! Next year!

There is no question in my mind she went straight home and looked it up now that she knew to. And I hope her friend who does such beautiful work goes, too.

I came away really glad Richard and I had both felt too tired to tackle Costco so we’d just gone to the much smaller grocery with the short lines. Which thankfully weren’t.