The dishwasher fix? It was good for one single load Saturday. After much research we unscrewed the door again tonight to check for corrosion, but, nope. At least we found that a new control board (if that works) is half the price at Sears–which helps, because at this point with all the repairs this thing has needed since immediately after the warranty we’ll have spent enough to have bought a Bosch in the first place. If we could find a schematic for the electronics we might be able to bypass the start switch but all links to one seem to be broken. Maytag MDBH945AWB.

A better part of the day was when I was quite surprised to find five new flower buds on the struggling baby mandarin tree. It is much happier where I moved it to.

I did not see the male Cooper’s hawk coming in till he landed on the giant elephant ear just outside the window ten feet away from me. I had twice today accidentally flushed a dove from right next to the door and such things do not go unnoticed.

But I had nothing to offer. Only love and silent gratitude at his presence. He stayed a little while.

I stumbled across a story in the St. Louis newspaper that I thought deserved wider notice: small farmers feeding their families on land their local airport was happy to have them work for 35 years. The airport didn’t have to pay to maintain it and an underserved community worked for its fresh vegetables, lugging in water by hand as needed.

A developer bought that land and the farmers expected that at last that would be the end of it all.

It wasn’t.

They’re getting an irrigation system, restrooms, and a farming-only deed in perpetuity. Across the street.

If you’re squinting, they’re at about the same point in both photos.

There’s a big new nest, Cooper’s hawk sized, in the tree next door that they favor for its height–the season has begun.

A Bewick’s wren was tugging hard at nesting material on the patio today and flew off trailing fluff in its beak.

We were getting in the car this morning when my husband said, Wait, I forgot my umbrella, and went back inside while I waited as a few drops started to fall. And so I had a moment to look up, and there, above that tree, was one of our pair, riding the thermals and circling around its nest below, letting all who fly here know that this, this spot was taken. The tree whose sweet flowers are so coveted later in the season by smaller birds.

Including the ever-swaggering crows. But we had to drive three blocks before we spotted one and then a little further down, a pair, and they were staying down low so as to be well out of sight of that hawk.

The more our Coopers hang around the more fruit we’ll get off our trees. Wishing them a successful season. Besides, fledgling raptors meandering through the amaryllises are so cute.

And Bewick’s wrens are really too small for them to bother with.

Point oh one of an inch was forecast for the rest of the day; the storm was supposed to be basically over, with a noncommittal shrug of a chance at slight drizzles tomorrow.

That .01″ has been .41″ so far, and every now and then another cloudburst hits for twenty, thirty seconds (and right on cue, here comes another one and I’m editing that number.) Go rain go. (And another one.)

The roots of the neighbor’s redwood have lifted the ground around our gate and so the latch misses connecting now by several inches, the gate held in place only by a small flowerpot–and so the first time, when I said, What was that? Richard looked out the window searching for where out there, going, Something just fell in the yard.

The trees all seemed to be accounted for. We realized that no, it was the gate slamming that mismatched fence. Let me in! Again. And again. And again.

We may not get a lot of weather here but we’re trying for this Dark and Stormy Night thing as best we can.

Here we go again.

Sitting on the floor, I unscrewed the screws. Here, could you get that one over there for me? Sure, says he.

He gently pulled the door and the cover apart to find the broken latch and the piece it connected to and we adjourned to our side-by-side computers to find the name of the part (which one of those three random numbers was the model number?) and what business might still exist in the area to buy it from. The local appliance parts place that my friend Diana and I once made an outing of? Long gone.

Fremont, the page said. (Oh okay that’s not too bad.) Open till 4:00 on Saturdays. I called them and they said they had two, Richard said something like Oh good! (you’re always on speakerphone at our house, one of the charms of hearing loss) and we looked at the clock, 2:30, and the weather and told them we were on our way. (Don’t close up early!)

Waze, an app that directs you away from traffic accidents, sent us clear around the bottom of the San Francisco Bay and back up. Wave after wave of blinding rain hit and it was just not a great time to be on the freeway or anywhere else out in that but by golly I wanted my dishwasher and he wanted to solve the problem.

They knew who we had to be the moment we walked in their door and opened our mouths. We chatted like old friends. They had an antique wringer-style washer on display; I told them my grandmother had had a live-in maid when my mom was growing up but that she’d told Mom later she’d have given her up in a second in exchange for a modern washer and dryer. We all allowed as how fortunate we were to have modern appliances, even when they’re being a pain.

Richard had actually used a wringer washer and he and one of the men talked about all the things you could get trapped in those: your hair. Your arm. Yup, those were the days.

There was a chance all along that it wasn’t just the latch but the expensive display panel going out again, and one wonders how long one should baby an old machine along before throwing in the towel. But then, just last month we had finally given up and replaced our vacuum cleaner. I do like the Dyson. But one hopes for a little time in between such things.

We got home, we did other things, we chilled a bit after that drive and we kinda didn’t want the hassle, either of us, till finally I said, What’ll it take us? Half an hour?  (Not saying, and that’s if it works.) And at that we both got off our duffs and went back in there and tackled the thing. I filled every last bit of space with more dirty dishes, and after three days of only doing a little in the sink at a time because my hands were bothering me, there were, shall we say, a few.

Connect the new piece, admire how shiny and new it looks, screw. all. those. screws. back in the door–

–and push the button in great hopes.

Nada.

Dannnng.

He wasn’t willing to give up that easy. Did you plug it back in?

Oh right.

Push the button.

Nada.

He tried pushing the cycle buttons, and just like before, they did briefly light up green, the one thing that had assured us all along that the panel wasn’t (entirely?) bad. Then he with his bigger stronger fingers pushed the On button and darn if that dishwasher didn’t cave. It knew who was boss.

The sound of that machine doing our dirty work at last was an immense relief. It finished the cycle, everything was sparkly clean and disinfected more than hand washing could ever do and I’ve emptied and refilled it most of the way again.

Try pushing not hard next time but long, says he. But I’m not touching that thing again till it’s all the way full. It may only have so many cycles left in it and I don’t want to waste a one.

We had the wettest December in history and then the driest January in history, as in, zero rain–my grass sprang up and grew just enough to look green and then froze in place as the top of the soil cracked apart as if it were summer. In this drought if you don’t feed us I don’t water you.

I woke up about 7:15 this morning to strong winds and leaves and limbs thrashing and an overcast but bright, deep yellow sky.

I’ve seen a sky like that–right before a tornado hit, ages and ages ago in a different place and it got me out of bed to go check the weather report, but no, as far as I can tell, it was simply the late dawn against the storm clouds and it faded to gray quickly.

There was an errand that had to be run today not tomorrow whether we wanted to hunker down or no, and so we were on the expressway at late rush hour clearly immediately after the tall eucalypus fell and blocked all southbound lanes. Shattered pieces were thrown across the divider and the northbound lanes where we were and beyond. A busy road–and yet there was no sign of any damaged car, just tree shrapnel. Everyone completely lucked out.

And I mean that, because coming from the other way there’s the crest of the hill and then there was that tree–with a 45 mph speed limit, there was no way to have seen it till drivers were right on it. Just past it, I was waiting at the light at the bottom of the hill while a rush of cars was coming back the wrong way in both lanes across the divider from me. People were doing crazy things, and meantime, the next group of cars was arriving facing them head-on at the light. One particularly panicked-looking woman reacted to my left-hand green arrow as if it were her right-turn green arrow–NO, honey, STOP.

I dropped Richard off a block away (if I had to be out and about he might as well work from work rather than home) and coming back there was already a cop with flashers on and the road coned off and the city’s tree workers were getting right to it. They had a big job there, and that one probably took immediate priority.

Tomorrow we get a ten-hour break in the middle of the day for the earth to inhale deeply of this rich essence of life-sustaining fluidity and then it starts coming at us again.

A good time to be thankful for a warm house to knit in.

I noticed a whole flock of finches not in the trees but in odd spots under what roofspaces we could offer them. Drier that way.

The colors in this nighttime photo are washed out: the greens are quite a bit greener and the light blue is more teal, but at least you can get an idea of how different they are from each other.

So. I had this silk turtleneck. A warm, very soft, heavyweight spunsilk turtleneck bought on clearance from Wintersilks at something like twelve bucks and free shipping in a color on the screen that I could only hope.

Um. No. And didn’t it match any of the things I’d wanted it to go with.

Today I saw again what color it could be, the one that had justified the purchase, and given the fact that I would be putting it on in a second if it were that I realized I was never going to wear it if I didn’t do something. I fired up my dyepot. Soapy water, rinse, throw it in, stir and turn over nonstop for a half hour as it bubbles away.

That was the one in the middle here. It now perfectly matches my favorite skirt. Score! Why stop now. When it came out, I threw in a silk sweater (left) and it too came out far better than what it had been. And then an older silk shirt that I’d previously dyed in the same Jacquard teal, and it had been beautiful, but then I had treated it for a stain one day and the Shout took out some of my dye–well, then, it was indeed a reversible one, wasn’t it. I should have known better.

So it sat in a drawer for a year and a half with me unwilling to toss what had been a favorite and not really believing it could be fixed.

But sometimes reversible dyes, if you’re really really lucky, can lift somewhat off the fabric in boiling water and resettle a bit as you stir with new dye. And as far as I can tell right now while it’s not quite all the way dry yet, I was really really lucky. I have my shirt back.

One of the thing about overdyeing natural-fiber clothes away from ugly or wrong colors is that you never know what kind of thread they used to sew the garment up with. On the turtleneck, it looks to have been a poly or poly/cotton blend so there are now lines of contrast around the hems and neck. This is why I tend not to overdye too far away from what the thing was.

But on that sweater. The 78/22 silk/nylon sweater. Nylon takes up wool dyes while polyester does not and all the thread took up the dye in a complete match, so it must have been nylon.

And what that means is that I can overdye it again in, oh I dunno, yale blue or anything else on the blue or green scale and the stitching will do exactly what I say again. I might, but morning and full dryness will show me exactly what I’ve got and I do like it so far.

A side note: for dyeing, only use a pot, stainless being preferable by far, that you will never ever use for cooking.

I stopped by the local nursery today and they told me the back wall along the fence is where they kept their bamboo stakes. Six feet tall, a set of six, seven bucks. Hey.

And so the frost cover won’t rest against the mango tree leaves anymore–and I spent a fair amount of time up on my tiptoes trying to get that thing over those stakes and back down firmly to the ground all around.

With all that extra space above the tree to heat up, so far at four hours after sundown there’s only a ten degree difference between the outside temp and underneath that canopy, but unless we have another severe cold snap that should be enough and I can always take them back down again while the tree’s this small.

And I won’t accidentally break off the tiny beginning of a leaf at the tippy top while taking the cover off in the mornings now. I know, I know–that one hurt, enough to get me off my duff and to go track down those stakes. Thank you all for the suggestions.

Oh, and on a side note? My friends Mel and Kris are going to be at Stitches West again this year. YES! Buy yourself some fine pottery (I’ll bet they’ll have yarn bowls) and tell’em I said hi. I put in a special request for rice bowls with extra high sides, perfect for berries and ice cream. Save me some.

It is amazing how much you can get done in a day when you’re avoiding starting in on the taxes.

The new leaves (which started this day) turn reddish before they turn green at full size.

The burn marks on the outer edges of the older leaves are from when I only had a black garbage bag to put over the tree at night–where the leaves touched it they were not happy after that exceptionally cold week of twenty-something-degree nights. The frost cover is much better, breathing, letting light in and still keeping it warmer, but better still would be to put some narrow stakes around the tree to suspend the cover above and off it. It’s above it now with that stake it came with, but it’s catching up to it fast.

Craft store? Where would you go? The 2x2s at the hardware store are a lot more massive than I want; I’m thinking more a size 15 knitting needle on stilts.

I can see the day coming soon when I will have to sew a bunch of frost covers together to make one giant one. (There are rocks on the bottom edges on the small chance of wind.) There will be more non-LED Christmas lights on it by then.

But it just amazes me how much our Alphonso mango has grown in the five weeks since we planted it. In winter! It seems to me that buying a vigorous variety in this climate, even though we’re going to keep it far shorter than it would do in its native one, is probably going to be protective against minor dieback like those leaf burns.

I missed it before. January did more than just flowers.

An O’Neill blueberry quietly doing its thing, waiting for the others to catch up. (As I look at the yarn and the calendar and realize Stitches West was almost a year ago and the next one is in two weeks and how on earth did that happen already?!)

I got me some knitting to do.

Rita: here (at the end) and especially here, where I knew in that moment that I might well never see her again. But I felt I was seeing her with all essence of strangerhood stripped away and she me and somehow it was enough.

I hadn’t seen her since then. Last Sunday I found myself thinking of my old friend. She’d been one of the patients who’d founded our lupus support group way back in the ’70’s, reaching out to others, putting an ad in the paper and seeing who might show up, offering, Let’s talk. She’d been a young mother when she got hit with it with kidney failure, bam, right out the gate.

She was middle aged and I was a young mother myself when I joined the group shortly after diagnosis, and in my first year or two got my first echocardiogram and saw my heart on a screen, had my first EEG, and briefly had kidney failure myself. I held on tight to the hope she offered and I wanted to be as kind and as thoughtful and reflective as she was some day when I grew up. And I simply wanted to get to be her age.

I am where she was then, in surprisingly decent shape all things considered, and I do now what she did: I come to those meetings to give others the hope I had so much needed.

I picked up the local section of the paper and flipped to the back.

I admitted to myself that I was looking to see if her obituary might be in there. Not something I’d done before nor that I wanted to find, just, it seemed the thing to do. Nope, no sign of one.

The emails came in last night and today. I guess I’m not the only one in the group who’d been thinking of her–two others had tried to call her.

Turns out they had found a tumor that explained why eating had become so hard and she had opted to simply observe where this new adventure might take her as it chose. It was a thing to learn, not fear.

She left us a little over a week ago, and I like to think she was letting us know. She was ninety-two or three, not sure when her birthday was.

I still want to get to be her age. And because of her I can see that I might.

Rain is in the forecast oh thank goodness after 30 dry days and freezing is not.

I almost didn’t see it. I was walking past it and did a double take.

Blueberries. Blooming. In January. Not profusely, but hey.

I didn’t know they could do that.

Needed to buy some birdseed, and since it was right off the freeway stopped on my way home by Yamagami’s Nursery to check out the fruit trees.

And boy did they have nice fruit trees. If you wanted cherries or peaches this very year it looks like you could have exactly that.

No Lorings in stock, though; they would have to order and find out if one is available. I texted messages with Richard and came home, for now.

But when the sun was low I picked that spade back up and dug that planting hole a little deeper and now, at last, that spot feels ready for whatever will go in. It will not stay bare for long.

A side note: I know vaccination is a hot topic right now and that there are strong emotions on both sides. Hear me out, if you would. Measles is *the* single most contagious virus known, and if you simply walk through a room hours after an infected person did you can catch it. I have an immunosuppressed friend from my knitting group who got quarantined from work this week because a co-worker had been exposed to someone who’d been exposed to someone who’d been exposed to someone at Disneyland, the disease leapfrogging up the state. That’s an awful lot of quarantining and lost wages and lost time.

Our daughter the microbiology PhD was telling an anti-vaxxer the other day, Sure, if you get German measles you’ll be sick and you’ll probably recover and you probably won’t be one of the unlucky ones who goes deaf or gets pneumonia or meningitis and all that. You’ll probably be okay.

But you don’t do it for YOU. You do it for every pregnant woman. Because it is horrendously dangerous to a fetus in utero at any stage of pregnancy and extremely likely to kill or brain damage them for life. You do it for them. Because you’re a good person.

As I knit some Abstract Fibers yarn, needing lots of bright colors against the winter fog and in celebration of the fact that Stitches West is less than a month away.

I could not talk the camera into focusing on the limb rather than the fence, but here goes. Variety: Tropic Snow, an apt name given the storms back East this week. (Throw a snowball for all us weather-deprived out here, will ya?)

There was no spark of green or new growth to be found yesterday at all–I looked for it. So I certainly wasn’t expecting to find green tips everywhere today but I did, just on this one tree,  always the earliest. Peaches! It’s leafing out!

We’ve had a forlorn and bare spot in the raised bed where the bird-killing heavenly bamboo was taken out last summer and I used that burst of happiness to finally go dig there in preparation for the next tree to go in. It’s ready. I came in and told him.

Last Valentine’s Day, he took me on an expedition to Wegman’s and got me the big, healthy Comice pear of my dreams. He was anticipating as happily as I was as we talked about what this year’s version should be.

Chris was coming at 11:00 to give me a quote on a few more trees.

The doorbell rang at about ten. I wasn’t expecting him at that hour…

It was the city utility workers, here to clear limbs away from the power lines, and when the guy said that I had to laugh and ask, What trees?

They walked around the yard and went Oh. Oh wow.

But there was one limb from the camphor that had grown back up close enough to give them something to do; it didn’t take long.

And then the one who was clearly in charge casually mentioned that he does tree cutting privately on his own time, too, and he’d be glad to give me a quote on that other stuff over there. Sure. So, the yucca (it wasn’t a yucca), trim the olive, take out that and that, he gave me a verbal quote.

Nothing was written down, details could be forgotten and misunderstandings could happen. He came back later with a business card but that was as far as it went.

Just minutes after they left the first time the doorbell rang again, and there was Chris.

We talked trees a little while. He took detailed notes of what was to be done and gave me a written estimate. When I asked about the Fuji apple, he confirmed what I was pretty sure of: my gardening guy had pruned nearly all the fruiting tips off. He was trying to keep the tree down to a good size for us but he’d been a little too enthusiastic.  Chris talked about one year wood for the plum but two year for apples (and I know it’s three to ten for pears). Now, this, he said, pointing out the much smaller Yellow Transparent next to it, you’ve still got a lot of fruiting wood on this one.

But I like Fuji apples a lot better. So now I know, at least, and next year will be different.

On the other side of the house, I am a bit reluctant to see those other trees go, but they are shading the solar panels by morning and the neighbor’s garden by afternoon and we need something shorter and my apologies (again) to the birds. But at least we’ll get them out before nesting season and will replace them immediately.

Chris’s crew is booked solid for several weeks out so we have time to decide what will go in instead. I’m thinking ultradwarf sour cherries and summer-producing dwarf mandarins. Maybe.