The wide expanses of farmland. White heads, some enormous with the plants sagging under their weight: “That one’s cauliflower,” said our niece. We three passengers were all trying to decipher crops from the expanses of green. We passed a proud sign: Iceberg Lettuce! (Wait, wait, let me guess.)

And the artichokes, the raspberries, the newly-planted-anyone’s-guess. The irrigation canals were dry but the fields were green.

And it rained, not much at all this first day of the incoming storm and less than we’ll be getting at home a hundred miles or so north, but any rain at all, we’ll take it.

Re the purple sweet potatoes I’d roasted in olive oil, someone wondered, “Where did these come from?”

“Here,” I answered. “Salinas.”

And so Easter was happily spent with family at his cousin’s house with her three small children running around excited at all the company. The baby, like all babies everywhere, takes especial delight in touching index fingertips with smiley people he doesn’t remember: close, connecting, just-at-length-enough as needed. (Sometimes he let me snuggle him too.) The three-year-old, after showing off the bows on her pretty shirt, played many a game. Her six-year-old sister quietly studied her grandmother’s drawing in action, intent on being able to create flourishes and flowers like that and was highly pleased with herself when she pulled off quite a decent version. Her grandma was even prouder.

I said something to (to us she’s) Aunt Mary Lynn and the three-year-old stopped right there and turned and stared at me and then back at my daughter across the kitchen: “You mean she’s yours?”

“Yes,” I smiled, “she’s my little girl.”

Little?! The kid took in how a 5’11” grown woman could be…!…and, done with that, jumped and skipped away with, “Okay!”

The first Babcock peach of the year, with quite a few smaller ones coming along.

So. Friday afternoon the phone rang. It was the repairman’s company with a quote at last on that part.

I had expected they might pad the retail price showing on the Maytag site ($143) but I was staggered. They affirmed to my disbelieving ears that what they said was what they meant. They wanted two-hundred-*what*?

Wow. That and what we spent replacing the panel and lock a month or so ago and we could have paid for a whole brand new dishwasher!

Okay, so we could still have done it ourselves: but we didn’t even know for absolute sure that that was the only thing wrong with it, he hadn’t been about to tell us, and we’d thrown an awful lot of money down that hole already. Three control panels, three door locks, four or five silverware trays and two circuit boards already, and still it tried to burn down our house.

The favor he didn’t know he was doing us was shocking us into wanting to feel like we were done with this mess forever and that we were better off paying one big lump now and finally getting it over with. And so today we drove to San Jose to where there was a floor model to look at and we ordered our super-reliable 500 series recessed handle, three-level, etc etc. It was even on sale. Good timing.

In other words, that guy totally put the ki-Bosch on our ever having to deal with that Maytag again.

And our new one will be SO nice.

Happy Easter, Passover, and Spring!

I heard the window and turning saw a small bird had hit on the other side from me and there was the Cooper’s hawk swooping tightly around right within an inch of the glass as it deftly caught the finch falling backwards. It took me a moment to be completely sure Coopernicus hadn’t hit too, but no, that sound was a finch-sized smack.

He then took his lunch to the middle of the fence where I could see that he, or maybe his chicks, would not go hungry–but where the marauding crows and ravens could, too, so he didn’t stay long. Territory: claimed. Lunch: accomplished.

Me: still going, Wow!

The dishwasher repairman came some time after three. He started off cheerful, with a thick accent I struggled to place. He sounded surprised when I excused myself to get out of his way and I wondered if he expected me to stand there and chat the whole time; a few pleasantries and we were done, right? I wondered what cultural miscues were going on here.

I remembered reading a Dennis the Mennis cartoon when I was a kid, a plumber under the sink and Dennis right by him and the guy wrapping it up by saying, Well, I could have done it in an hour, lady, but with your little boy’s help it was two and a half. And my mom, when I showed it to her because it so echoed her own strict orders to us when someone had had to come out, answering, And *that* is why I make you stay away!

Right. So. My momma taught me. Repairmen. You stay out of their way.

There was the whirrr whirrr as he took the door apart screw by screw, like we had so many times, only with better faster tools. It didn’t take him too long before he was calling out to me as I sat and knitted in the next room to tell me the circuit board had short-circuited.

(Exactly as Richard had guessed.)

But he didn’t have the part, he would have to order it. No, he couldn’t tell me yet how much it would cost. He would call me in a few days and come back with it.

He looked annoyed and I had no idea why.

I don’t know if Maytag is willing to pay for that second visit or if they’d expected him to come more prepared; I do know we’ve replaced that circuit board before. Probably a good idea if I go talk to them again.

He found it. He pointed it out to me. He offered to buy me one for the fun of it. I said something about Mother’s Day by way of justifying it and he just kind of waved that off–no need for an occasion.

I was so not expecting any of that.

And so I am finally going to have an electric spinning wheel: small, portable, useful, and the Electric Eel Wheel might actually make it so my nerve-damaged fingers can spin laceweight, but even if it doesn’t I would love it. I could spin on my lowest-energy, highest-flare days. (And it would just flat out be a fun toy to play with, he’s right.)

On Ravelry they say they expect to charge about $200-240 with a single bobbin after the Kickstarter campaign is over and then they will get to work getting them made and mailed before they consider how far they want to take this business after that. “This project will be funded on Tue, Apr 7 2015 10:42 AM PDT,” meaning, that’s your deadline if you’re interested. Everything’s open source in case you want to make your own, including the bobbins, but meantime, the single-bobbin+wheel price starts at $149 (with one still left in that option as I type). We went for three bobbins.

I like these guys.

Trying to place the name, he asked me, Who’s Chris Hadfield?

I started singing Ground Control to Major Tom (I LOVE this video! It’s someone’s repost of the one that was seen 22 million times but only had a one-year license to stay up) and he instantly got it. If you haven’t read Stephanie’s post, please, do, her post is way more fun than mine!

Meantime, here, I turned the dishwasher on at 11:00 last night and we were off to bed. At nine a.m. I went to grab my hot cocoa mug out of it–and the door wasn’t quite hot enough to burn my hand but it was getting close and the thing smelled of burning plastic.

In disbelief I pulled it open and the white plastic at the bottom below the heating element was scorched.

This is a dishwasher that had previously been serviced under a recall for having burned houses down. I immediately unplugged it.

Maytag, bless them, when I called, duly noted that we had bought it according to their records in 2007 so of course it was long out of warranty. I expected an argument but instead they immediately offered to send someone out to repair it: the service call and the labor would be on them–they hoped I wouldn’t mind if we paid for the parts that might be needed?

Sounded quite fair to me. Although: I will have a tab open on the computer with their own price list/suggested retail for such showing when the guy comes. One can only hope he says it’s repairable.

So we came thisclose to burning our house down last night, and when I mentioned it on Facebook my friend India from our Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign (where we and others knit hundreds of hats to create a sense of community among members of Congress) said her neighbor actually did get burned out of their house a few nights ago by their dishwasher.

Mine is model MDBH945AWB (that last B for black). In case you want to go check yours. It might be a good idea.

It’s that time of year again. There are three peregrine falcon eggs in the nest on San Jose City Hall, and the first one started to hatch this morning; you can see the chick moving in there. Video of the new little one here and reports are that the next one has apparently started to pip (break through with its egg tooth). To life!

(p.s. Dear Apple Autocorrect, a propos of nothing to do with this post: creme brûlée is not creme bullets. That will be all.)

Sunday School and the subject was the feeding of the five thousand that had come to the hilltop to hear Jesus speak and now had a long journey home ahead of them. Jesus told his disciples he didn’t want them fainting from hunger along the way, we needed to take care of these people here.

A stunned, “Two hundred pennyworth would not suffice!” as in, And what are WE supposed to do about it! gave way to, “Here is a lad with five small barley loaves and two little fishes but what are they among so many?”

The story goes on to say that after the blessing and after all had eaten, in the hands of God that young boy’s gift had become twelve baskets’ worth of leftovers.

And the thought occurred to me and I raised my hand, remembering how much young teenage boys eat and what a sacrifice that might have been, varying with the actual age of the kid.

“Y’know, he could have squirreled that quietly away and just been glad he’d had the foresight to pack a picnic (or that his mom had). But instead he offered his food up in hopes of helping others who might need it more. There’s no way he could have known the entire crowd would have a full meal from what he’d offered, no way he could ever have known that two thousand years later his small act of kindness would still be blessing countless other peoples’ lives. It is a beautiful metaphor for the idea that every act of kindness we do takes on an eternal life of its own, far beyond our ability to see.”

And I’m sitting here thinking, I need to always remember to be ready with that first basket. In whatever form it needs to come in. To see in the moment and not think of myself first. One can only hope.

The Bababerry that was a dry-looking stick a few weeks ago. The grower’s description, here.

So I have someone I need to knit for, and I’d settled on a type of yarn that I thought would work well but not a color. I’d narrowed it down pretty much to two.

They were cones of silk from Colourmart2.com and still in the thick plastic bags they’d come in.

I hesitated and finally ripped open the one on the left and tucked it into a ziploc with needles for an errand where I was likely to have to sit and wait awhile. Colourmart’s bags are more bug proof than mine and I like keeping the yarn in them till I’m ready to set it to needle, so, this was supposed to end my inner debate once and for all.

It did, actually: the instant that thing was open I felt a surprising pang of disappointment–but I ignored it and kept getting it ready for my errand, where, it turns out, I did not have time to knit a single stitch. And the longer I carried that cone around the more certain I was.

Well then. Now I finally knew: the other one is the one. Clearly.

New flowers on the sweet cherry–we’ve gone from only at the very top to continuing on down. I feel like I can never get enough of those flowers. Some of the earlier ones are starting to throw sweet confetti.

Top, right, and left, I’m trying to give a better sense of the whole of the mango. The new buds at the top? They weren’t there at the beginning of the week. We had a three-day heat wave and it actually hit 94.7 degrees yesterday–in March. So strange. The plant life took off all over the yard.

I have no idea how many actual mangoes, if any, we’ll get this year but it looks promising and the honeybees are definitely trying their best.

He was about a year old when we moved here and his parents were some of the first people we met.

He’s the kid who, post college graduation (he’s back now for grad school), took a job for awhile in Texas such that we utterly randomly ran into him at church in Ft. Worth while we were visiting my in-laws. Out of all the places in all the country and to end up in the same room at the same time… Our jaws hit the ground in unison.

Such a great kid. Yeah yeah yeah, so, I knew him when, as well as some of the other kids in the video who also grew up with mine. Don’t know if you’ve seen it yet but JK Rowling herself called this brilliant and how cool is that?!

He mashed Bruno Mars with Harry Potter.  Keith plays Harry (direct YouTube link). And if you watch it over here you get to find out more about that python whose face his buddy sang to.

Yeah, that talk about getting the taxes done so fast?

Turbotax e-files the federal form for free but charges $24.95 to e-file the state one, after all they charge for the software. For twenty-five bucks I can make a trip to the post office, thanks, since I was going there anyway.

One checks every page first, of course…

Hearts. And smiley faces? I stared. And here’s another one. Hearts?! Smiley faces?! Turbopunked? Emoticonned?

Nah, said he later, probably came from when I got the printer to finally work with the new computers. Must still be a glitch in there somewhere.

And it only shows up when we’re doing that one little task, think I. Great.

Michelle dropped by and she and I spent some time going through what was missing and what was mutilated and trying to reprint what was needed.

No more emoticons but some pages still stayed inexplicably vanished.

That was one of the more irritably spent $24.95 ever. But now (unless we hear back to the contrary from Sacramento and the Feds) we are really and truly *done* for this year. Let’s just assume the pristine view we saw on the screen was what they received.

You just really don’t want the tax collector’s face to do what mine did when I first saw those printouts.

I was ecstatic: I’d done the taxes and I’d done them in under four hours. This has never happened before. Richard knew of one other number we needed–and it was right there, page two in the stack. Done.

The Meyer lemon burst into bloom in celebration–there were no flowers yesterday, but, look at it now. 

Crumpled sharp-edged eggshells around a trunk or stem are the easiest, most benign way to keep snails and slugs out of what you’re trying to grow.

And so I had to make that chocolate hazelnut torte. Had to. My future fresh-picked peaches depended on it.

Today’s Sunday School teacher, whom I happen to be married to, was talking about the parable of the sower who tossed his seeds along the ground as he walked, hoping for a good crop later. You’ve probably heard that one.

The text was read and then the poetry of it was discussed, metaphor by metaphor, soil types, marauding birds (what, no squirrels? Do you know how fast they dug up the sugar snap pea seeds I put down?) the part about the lord of the harvest saying, no, don’t pull out the tares or you’ll uproot the wheat along with it, let them keep growing together till they’re ripe. The growth habits of rye and wheat plants were mentioned and we had a visiting rancher from Wyoming on hand (what were the chances!? Never seen the guy before) who talked about how they are mechanically separated now at harvest with the machine being able to tell which is which.

Cool. Learn something new. While part of me was wondering, two thousand years later they’ve *still* got their seeds mixed?  Couldn’t be by much, surely. Clearly there was a lot more to ask the guy but it wasn’t the time or place.

Then the general query was thrown out there: So what did it all mean?

I raised my hand and pronounced: Having planted a few trees this past week, if you want them to produce well then by golly you’ve got to have slimy earthworms and chicken manure in there.

The tall man standing at the front of the room was amused as the room laughed. “Slimy. Earthworms. And chicken” (we were in church, the only word I would dare use there and that he would ever use anyway) “manure.”

Yup. Every life has to have some for the person to grow into the best they can become. It’s all just part of how it is.