(I posted a picture, briefly, of my afghan for my Zoom knitting group.)

I was walking into Trader Joe’s yesterday when my eyes met those of an older woman looking into mine with clear and delighted recognition on her part. Ukrainian Orthodox, was my guess. I noted she did a quick glance at my chest, but no, I was not wearing a gerdan this time.

My mistake and one I instantly felt a pang at. I try to put one on before any outing around here for the sake of the refugees, if I’m not wearing an embroidered blouse from there, and instead she was the one smiling and putting me at ease.

I had not been planning on buying more of either for the moment.

She’ll never know it but I’m sure the impact on me of that, of how it made me feel that what I’ve been trying to do is actually more important to the community than I’d had any idea–and not just to me–is part of how the following happened.

What I wrote this morning to a Ukrainian artist I had not previously actually interacted with but whose page I had followed for months:

This is a beautiful necklace and I have admired your skill and art, but had not done more than that.

I woke up this morning with the surprise of a sense of certainty that was completely unexpected that I needed to buy this necklace: for me, but especially for you.

I of course cannot know your specific circumstances at all. I pray for Ukraine and its people every day, and somehow this morning it felt like God was saying, this daughter of mine needs to know that she is not alone. Go be with her. Share the love of her work with her out loud where she can hear it.

And so I bought it and am very grateful for the privilege of doing so. Thank you for making this. I will wear it with pride and love and much gratitude, and I wish you all my very best from across the world.

Such a beautiful letter I got back. It will stay with me a long, long time.

Scene: This evening.

Me: I did my four rows yesterday, and today, five!

Him, putting on a mock pouty face: But isn’t that breaking, the, the, the RULES! It’s supposed to be four!

You goof! I burst out laughing, which is exactly what he’d hoped for. I’m tempted to defy my hands and do a sixth just for that, but, nah.

Scene: dinner. Yonder columnar green apple out the window.

Me: I haven’t knit anything yet today. I got pulled away by a brown skein I had to wind that had felted in the scouring and was super-snaggy (just that one color, what was up with that) and it took me a long time. But I promised myself I would knit four rows a day on that thing and I need to get to it. At a minimum, of course, but four. I have to.

Him: You have to? Or you want to?

Me, looking at him: Yes.

So he asked it again.

I counted the amount of time out loud vs size of the project.

He still wanted to know, the little stinker: did I actually *have* to?

I grinned. Well. I’m going to call it a yes. So there.

Now let me just go do that fourth one. I had to stop to wind and scour another 150 grams of the black just now because to my surprise the first was running out. I must be getting something done here somehow after all.

He’s a fellow gardening and fruit tree enthusiast, so I wore my beaded cherry tree necklace to the doctor’s today. Besides, it’s pretty and I’m a relentless showoff for other people’s art.

He liked it, and I told him a woman in Ukraine had made it for me. In Kherson.

He took a deep breath at that one. Then a quiet, “Wow.”

She had sent me pictures of her apartment, I added, nodding, and had declared, We will repel the invaders. We will rebuild.

We quickly got on with what was supposed to be the point of the appointment, tests, lupus, meds, etc.

But as it was time to leave, he suddenly stopped and turned back to me. He’d clearly been thinking about it because he said, “Please give her all my best.”

He paused a moment, then added with maybe more emotion than he’d intended, “Please tell her we’re all with her.” He wanted so much to convey that. I promised him I would.

And I remembered the time he had had to cancel an appointment with me to fly to his elderly widowed mom in Hong Kong when she had been ill. He had never outright said it but I knew that that was while the mainland authorities were violently putting down large pro-democracy protests. But his mom needed him. He came. Her whole country…

Please tell her we’re all with her.

That I did, and why it was especially meaningful to me to hear it coming from him.

Intarsia blues.

A white stitch in a green spot in the middle of the row, spotted after the end of the row: I debated the ways I could fudge that, knew that no, I really really couldn’t, tinked back all those ends-wound-around-ends and fixed it. Grimly at first, and then with satisfaction.

Because that is one of the great gifts of knitting: you can make it do what you wanted it to do even if it didn’t comply the first time. Or the second or the third, and you get better at it each time.

Says me.

I reknit the rest of that row and the next and put it down again to take a good look. Time to start the awning, right?

Somehow I had knit two white stitches together a day’s worth of work ago.

Now, THAT I can fix without ripping out. I just have to get to that one, have a length of white at the ready, drop the one from above on down till it becomes two and work one back up, then knit (crochet hook more likely) into the stitch left dangling with the waiting strand and vertical-kitchener it on up and weave its ends in.

Now. No more of these shenanigans, okay, self?

It was 8:19 and sunset was officially at 8:30 when I started towards the door to see if my tomatoes and latest batch of apricot seedlings needed watering after the heat of the day but I saw and stopped just in time.

There was my little Bewick’s wren doing its nightly dust bath with great vigor.

So I stopped, as I always do, and watched it dance. My phone was nowhere near and I didn’t want to disturb it, but one of these days I hope to catch a video of this: every way a bird can move, it does. Tossing diving jumping flinging.

It flew at last to the top of the wooden box, with a small cloud trailing in its wake. There it did a big shake that tossed out a round cloud like a halo of light against the darkening sky before making a clean break for the tart cherry tree nearby.

And in that moment it instantly had a name, honorable if a not very dignified one.

Pigpen.

Last night a certain someone couldn’t find his yogurt.

I found it, I told him, It was right behind–

— (oh wait look those are the cherries I picked a week ago and forgot about. Oh look they’re still perfectly good. Cool!)

I had been wishing for one more bite of that pie without depriving my wintertime freezer stash.

I didn’t mention it. I simply got up a bit early this morning, pitted the two and a half pounds, scant but they would do; and there was this bit of leftover crust in the fridge from making those two-person minis the other day.

Which is how there was a sour cherry pie coming out of the oven this morning before the certain someone was even up, and boy was he surprised.

Could he have ice cream with his?

He could.

Meantime, five more long rows done so far today. It’s knitting, but (looking at the back here) it’s almost equally weaving.

Let’s see, if I do this on the right side row then this strand is going to end up here when I need it over there so is it worth carrying over or do I break off a new strand and oh wait over there too and it all looks like a game of fifty-two pickup anyway, and I’m not just talking about the bajillion loose strands on the back.

Richard didn’t really know why he should be excited that the top of the railing row was finished, but he was happy for me.

I stopped a minute ago, some time later, and set it out and looked at it.

It does. It really does. Those wretched steps whose rows I ripped out again and again, they actually do look like what I was trying to do, and with what I’ve done today you can actually see that it’s actually going to look like the picture that it was supposed to.

I wish I could show you yet–but just let me say what a huge relief that is, and what a huge incentive to keep going. Nothing propels success like success.

It was a bit of a cri de coeur: I had tried leaving individual messages, gotten no response, and finally wrote to the whole ward.

I have a tart cherry tree, I said, and I’ve been getting up early in the mornings to pick from it hoping to beat the risks of the low UV exposure at that hour and it’s flaring me and I absolutely have to stop. But it’s a crime to let those cherries go unpicked, and the last of them are ripe now.

Save me from me, I wrote. Email me first so we don’t get forty people with a handful apiece, but please, come get yourself some pie cherries from my tree. It’ll be hands-and-knees work, though, because the ones left are mostly down close to the ground.

The only answer I got last night was from a friend insisting she was going to pick them today–for me.

We agreed to wait to see if anyone else answered first. People were being too polite, not wanting to shove to the front of the line, I figured (I mean, how could anyone not be passionate about pie cherries, even if that first person wasn’t.)

I got two messages this morning: one from a friend who admitted she’d long wished she had a tree like mine and that sour cherry was her favorite pie, too, and she would dearly love to have them. Could she come by after her dental appointment?

That would be great!

The other came in a few minutes after the first, from N’s daughter, saying, That’s my mom’s absolute favorite, I’d love to come pick them for her.

Several hours after I’d heard from her mom, I told the daughter that I’d completely forgotten till that moment, but, I had wire racks from old ovens around the base of the tree after seeing a ground squirrel next to it: they won’t come up where they can’t dig down, and I didn’t want it chewing on the bark and roots. Those might be rough on her mom’s knees.

That was it, she was coming with her kids. She called her mom and then told me they were on their way over.

Meantime, I was on the phone with the doctor’s office and they said I needed to be seen but I needed to have a covid test first, and not just a home test.

The daughter took pictures of her kids holding up their treasureboxes of bright fruit with the cherry tree as background and it just made my day.

They held some out: did I want any?

(Always, of course, but I had so much in my freezer.) I opened the door a crack, trying not to breathe in their direction: No, I’ve got plenty, thanks, though!

They left, I sent out a note to the ward saying the cherries were picked and thank you everybody, and I headed off to the clinic.

The grandmother read that and dashed over, hoping she hadn’t lost her chance to at least get some. Turns out she had missed that phone call.

Richard had been in a meeting and I hadn’t interrupted, so he didn’t know that the daughter had come by; he just met the grandmother at the door (trying to keep his distance because of the covid exposure), and a moment later found her crushed, saying, It’s stripped. They’re all gone.

(While the daughter had been going, Mom, answer your phone…)

And everybody’s having a good laugh over the whole thing now.

Oh, and the covid test? It was negative.

It came last night when it was almost dark, and I wasn’t entirely sure till it took flight that it was a Bewick’s wren.

Having made the discovery, it came back tonight for more while there was still some light out.

Have you ever seen a bird playing? I’m sure there was a reason for it, drying out some annoying mite or something, but it was dancing and flipping its tail and making burrowing motions and throwing out clouds of the fine dust in this sweet little pile it had discovered. Again and again and again, with wings, tail, head, it’s all good. Whee! It must have felt very vulnerable while being so into it, and so it didn’t come when the sun’s full light would give it away to predators.

That tiny bird can really create a cloud. Zigzag! Fling! Marilyn Monroe’s skirt with the tail flipping!

Now how am I supposed to go sweep that up in good conscience?

Picked another five+ pounds of cherries this morning, only this time I had the sense to pit them before taking the shower they were going to make me need. I froze them in pie amounts and had a half a pie’s worth left over.

Got out two stoneware bowls a few minutes ago, covered them in thawed pie crust, made a half recipe split between them, they’re in the oven, and hopefully we’ll manage to share one tonight and one in the morning rather than scarf an entire one down each all at once. But we’ll see.

Then the phone rang.

Richard’s aunt and her son, the grandmother and father of the groom on Saturday, have just been diagnosed with covid after avoiding it for so long. (Quick thought: let’s see, that’s two of the five people I hugged there that I can think of…)

Me: Are they okay?

He said they were.

Good. Let’s all stay that way. (Hoping hard, knowing that she’s the caretaker to her husband.)

Eight minutes left on that timer. Soon there will be pie.

Oh there you go.

Got up this morning, picked a gallon of cherries till the sun really was too high for me to be out there, and was glad the rest weren’t quite that dark a red yet. This is about four pounds.

I still need to go process all these and after checking on the tree near sunset, um, tomorrow that mixing bowl needs to be empty and ready and a second one, too.

About eighteen pounds have already been picked. We got about ten pounds last year.

I’m curious to see whether we’ll get to triple the record. And this is a little tree, more a bush.

Superbloom year indeed.

(Update: 3.5 lbs actual fruit after pitting.)

I woke up this morning with the thought, and those people were okay because people who didn’t know them pulled over on the freeway on that mountain pass next to that truck on fire and that steep drop-off in order to get them to safety, at great risk to their own. I just needed to emphasize that point to honor who they are and what they did, whoever they are.

Meantime, I finished a random Zoom-meeting-knitting hat. It started with an intended recipient but the overtwisted stash yarn was nah…not what I was looking for… But it’s done, and someone will like it.

I am determined to make some progress on that afghan even if I’m doing everything three times to get it right; I’m getting closer to where it’s more obvious and less of the stage of what will it actually look like if I do this no wait I meant this. Two rows in 90 minutes with about 300 rows to go.

But at least I won’t be doing seed stitch in alternating doubled-stranded colors with a third worked across the back of them for much longer.

When did they say Christmas was?

Guess where we were today. (Youtube link)

Some of both the bride and groom’s families were caught in that mess while the truck was still on fire at Altamont Pass. We were a little later, and by then the fire was out but it took us a very very long time to creep past.

I thought no way someone survived that. They did, though, they’re apparently okay.

So we were late to the cousin’s son’s wedding in Modesto but we made it, they made it, everybody understood, and the angst let go to the joy as we walked in those doors. (Man, did we look that young back in the day? Wow.) Their friends were having the times of their lives. The couple was having the joy of theirs. So tender to each other.

The DJ made a point of celebrating Richard’s aunt and uncle’s fifty-third.

Coming back, we opened Waze first.

By now, the 580 freeway was a complete no-go. As it should have been earlier in the day, and we were directed to a very long way around with a windy mountain road with super-tight close-barrier lanes and drop-offs–we would never normally want to take that route but we were grateful for it, we made it, and we’re home safe and sound.

May they live long and happily ever after. Such a cute couple!