Joe was here, inspecting the furnace and ductwork he’d installed a little over a year ago. Not that it really needed it, just, after that CO leak from the one he took out I’m not taking any chances.

Just about the first words out of his mouth this morning were, How’s the baby? Knowing it would make a grandma happy and grinning back at my big grin. Then he told me his worker standing next to him had a five-month-old, so that I could share in that beaming new dad’s pride, too. Happy times.

He exclaimed over the changes to the yard and the trees and the new carpeting in here. (One room done so far on the flooring–it’s a good start.)

I thought about it after he left and realized just how much his work had changed everything: we had known for several years that we were going to have to shell out a whole lot at some point to do what he ended up doing for us (we just had had no idea how serious that need was going to end up being) and we had had no idea how much it was going to cost. We couldn’t take on any other major expenses whatsoever till that was all done and settled.

Freed from that now, bit by bit we are getting this place to what we want it to be. And it feels wonderful.

A few more pictures. (Note that Madison’s clothes didn’t make it throughout the day. Actually, I don’t think any of the kids’ did. I remember those days…)

The boys were sick; did we still want to come?

We looked at each other: yes.

A follow-up call last night. Hudson was now at 102.3, so, just to make sure, did we still want to come?

We knew the risks and said a prayer and still felt like wild horses and viruses couldn’t keep us away and hopefully having already had the flu in September and having had the shot such as it was…

Of course we went. Our grandsons needed snuggle time all the more.

The baby and parents are still healthy and we did a lot of handwashing between kids.

It is amazing how much energy small sick children can have. Parker’s one meltdown was when we realized that we needed to go back to the airport now. We promised we would come again soon and he calmed down fairly quickly and made us promise again. We promised again. Alright then–and he helped take us there after all (giving Kim some one-on-one time with her one-month-old, something I know every new mom with older kids could use more of.) Hudson at long last fell asleep on the way there. I was sorry he would wake up to find us gone, but we’ll be keeping that promise. Soon.

And Madison is a perfect baby.

And we are home again. More pictures later. It was a wonderful, long day but we’ve got some sleep to catch up on ourselves.

Crazy busy day but I got it all done and we had a great time with friends. Happy Birthday, Nina! Even if I didn’t find a hyacinth this year. Next year.

More later.

I put off doing the seaming for at least a month. Deadlines are a wonderful thing.

I put off running the ends in on the red jumper for longer. Deadlines are a wonderful thing.

Malabrigo Arroyo for the English Rose pink and Malabrigo Rios in the Ravelry red–only the softest for my grandbabies, and only superwash for my daughter-in-law and son to have to deal with.

I was late for knit night because I was stitching up those four pink side seams at home where there was no question there was enough light. The last part I did was around the armholes, which I should have had curling the other way.

Next thing you know I might even make baby booties. That fit. But here, let me run the last of these ends in first.

Testing testing 1 2 3

My blog broke last night. The resident geek took a look. Turned out that when I’d been hitting Delete Spam of late, it was simply squirrelling it away like a six-year-old hoarding last year’s rotten Halloween candy in the closet. Thousands of pages of spam and no room for anything more.

He did his best and we gave it up and went to bed.

And look! My Preview and Publish buttons are back and I think this post won’t vanish into the ether like the attempts last night.

1, 2, 3… GO!

An overflowing bowl (thank you Mel and Kris!) of strawberries to pass around: at this time of year they’re red and ripe but not overly juicy nor sweet; they are, however, locally grown.

A very small bowl of sour cream and one of brown sugar to each person.

Dip. Dip again.

And serve it as a side rather than dessert to make sure there’s no threat of guilt over quantities consumed.

So far today, the mango tree has grown more than the knitting. So I’ll post a picture of the one and then get going on the other.

This guy.  Trapped and praying as the semi bore down on him.

“Divine sources did not immediately respond to this reporter’s repeated requests for comment,” says the Washington Post, in not quite a tongue-in-cheek tone but rather sheer wonderment at the wholly improbable but indescribable relief of an outcome.

May he personally tell the tale of his great good fortune to his great-grandkids many decades hence.

It seems we will have room for yet more fruit trees, with a call in to Chris at Shady Tree for a bid on two more weed ones that are shading the solar panels (and my mandarin and mango. Richard stood by the Page with a UV meter and it read zero at 2 pm, thus the yellowing leaves and my willingness to let a little more bird habitat disappear for a few years till the new catches up.) Montmorency? Lorings at last? Let the plotting commence.

And then.

We were at Costco, looking at a monster package of cherries. Rainiers–I’d like to try them, but that was a month’s supply. Now it might have been different had they looked like they hadn’t just traveled a long way over a long time and then been left out unrefrigerated, but as he wondered how we could eat them all it yanked my thoughts to our Stella cherry, to all our fruit trees as they grow up. That box (which we did not buy) potentially represented only a few branches’ worth.

For a brief instant the sheer volume to come overwhelmed. Countered instantly by, but see the difference is that we’ll be eating and freezing however much we want and then giving just-picked totally ripe homegrown to all comers, and surely there will be no shortage of those. A sun-warmed, dripping-ripe full-flavor peach is hardly the proverbial and much-maligned foundling zucchinis abandoned on doorsteps in the dead of the night. ( A side note: make zucchini bread, using butter, brown sugar, baking powder not soda, and, the most important part, substituting ground pecans for a quarter to a third of the flour. That will justify any zucchini planting you might ever do.)

And the picking of that fruit means this necessarily sun-deprived lupus patient will have reason to be outside at dusk for many a day, getting some badly-coveted fresh air and the satisfaction of doing good in the process. It’s like you cast on and then the trees do all the knitting for you.

Cherry on, then.

Got my computer back. There was a woman wearing a gorgeous handknit cowl at the Apple store as I waited for them to retrieve it, so I sat across the table from her and pulled out my own cowl project, figuring there’s no way a knitter would fail to notice. I wanted to compliment her on hers, whether she’d made it or not–but she had her face deep in her phone and never looked up. Ah well.

And I got the plant covers from Mr Garden, coming via express delivery. I guess they figured if you wanted frost protection in the dead of winter you wanted it right now! True that.

I pulled one over the mango as the sun went down, and thinking there was no way that fabric with all those little holes in it could seal in enough heat from the lights I ended up putting the thick plastic bag I’d been using previously over it to double-layer it. The forecast was officially for 45 tonight, but we’ve gone eight and nine degrees colder than the daily local forecast pretty consistently. Good enough for the Page mandarin, not so much for the Alphonso.

I kept checking the remote reader in disbelief and finally grabbed that black bag off so as not to cook the tree. I was impressed: okay, this thing does work. I expect it would not have the condensation problems of the other and, fungus-wise, to be much healthier for the tree.

Hours later it is still 19 degrees warmer than the ambient air. But we’ll see in the morning if it’s dry under there. Letting in 85% percent of the weak levels of wintertime UV is not enough longterm, but it is good enough that we could leave it on for a day or two should we need to before spring and that alone makes the purchase worth it.

It is, though, compared to the black cover, kind of like having a nonstop full moon out there.

Managed to haul my old and new computers into the Apple store to transfer old data; I hadn’t realized that meant they’d be keeping both for a day or two. Thank goodness for old laptops. (Look, Ma, no autocorrect!)

Richard’s still not carrying heavy objects yet and with a cane I’m one-armed, so it was a bit of a feat but we unloaded at the curb there and got it done, with the help of some great Apple employees. They both sympathized and rejoiced for me that that old beast was a Windows XP and my new one was a good Mac to make up for it. SO much better.

We walked around the corner to the Timothy Adams chocolate shop afterwards and had a truffle for now and some hot chocolate for tomorrow morning, warming our hands with it as we walked to the car.

Part of me is thinking I really should go shock some quickly-knit-up wool in cold/hot/cold/hot water with lots of agitation so I could have the perfect title for this post: Dell and the rows of felt.

She was a knitter. She would have loved that.

We bought the plane tickets. Now we just both have to keep every germ far, far from both of us before we go cuddle that new baby.

And someone needs to go weave in every yarn end and sew every seam yet unsewn and maybe, like, y’know, knit a dozen more things to go with the rest of the superwash wool before we get there.

I was looking for a cover for the tropicals that would let the UV get to the plants, and found one that, looking at the manufacturer’s page, allows 85% of the light in. Hopefully it will hold in enough heat, too–I’ll be testing it out first. Having such a thing do so would mean being able to leave the mango and mandarin safe and sunned without having to be there as the temperature rises and falls each day: catch a flight before dawn to see the new granddaughter and the last flight back at night without having to leave the more fragile mango under black plastic in between.

But I’m thinking maybe I could also cover a small peach or cherry tree with these when the fruit is ripening to keep the birds out. Cool.

Yeah, like the squirrels won’t touch it. Uh huh. I’ll wrap the bottom of the trunk in bubble wrap as an extra measure–that has still been totally successful at putting down lines they won’t cross.

Well, except for one time and that was today: I have it wrapped around the pole next to the bird feeder and taped at the top. The bottom edge was a bit loose, though, with a bit of the pole exposed.

Wood! Darn if that thing didn’t grab onto that one spot showing and run up the pole till his nose couldn’t push any further. I could have popped bubbles right on his back and hearing me come (I didn’t want that behavior repeated) he scrambled to try to figure out how the heck to get out of there, wriggling in the bubble wrap all the way but not popping any from that side. He looked like a little kid who can’t figure out how to find their way out of their covers in the morning.

I guffawed a long time. He thought he’d had those evil bubbles thwarted.

I’m making a blanket statement: I will defeat them on the fruit trees, too.

It is the most amazing thing to have a fussy newborn who just really needed to put that diaper to the use it was made for quiet down at the sounds of our voices and search for our faces coming from the screen. As the old Ma Bell commercials used to say, it’s the next best thing to being there.

Thank heavens for Skype.