We have an apparently fairly large mystery yardguest whose new digs were discovered today. I wondered whether I could borrow the neighbor’s dog to bark at it, since the thing probably moved in here to get away from it over there. Although, for the dog’s sake, maybe not: it reminded me of a friend’s tale of skunks having territorial fights under her living room to the point of soaking her rug above them with their spray. Let’s not.

The dirt got shoved back to where it had come from and a large object was placed on top of the hole to encourage the thing to move elsewhere.

Definitely needs a trail cam.

But meantime I got six rows of afghan done so far plus a new cowl cast on at the doctor’s waiting room that I continued on while waiting for his doctor across town, and the thing is 1400 stitches along already.

So what I’ve been told is that if your apricot tree’s growth tips get disturbed for any reason they stop right there and that’s it till the next spring: no side branching from below that point, no new leaves nor fruiting tips, nothing. And it’s easy to tell, because the new leaves and limbs start out red.

It went from pot to ground in the spring and almost immediately that was that. Would the limbs or trunk stretch out a bit, at least? I took a measuring tape out every so often but the answer was nope. August was the same as April. I figured after four years in a large pot, it was concentrating on stretching out its roots in their new digs. I certainly hoped so.

We had a heat wave of a few days and then a couple of cool nights and maybe it decided to call it good, that’s a winter, it’ll do. Maybe?

Because a few weeks ago it started doing this. Not the whole tree, just these two limbs. A few days ago  the upper one started adding a side shoot.

The lower one, meantime, got its end chomped off by a bug and I thought, Well, that’s that, then.

It took a deep breath for a couple of days and then sent out a do-over from the node.

I don’t know what I don’t know why it’s doing all this now, but I like it. Did it get its equinoxes flipped? It does make me wish I had the botany degree I almost chose in college.

Turns out I didn’t squint well enough at the fine print and got the name of the sock knitter wrong (there are only so many of us avid knitters there.) All straightened out now.

One more week till I get to start the months of recovery from retina surgery and I am ready for it.

We don’t have collection plates nor fundraisers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he reminded us.

With the exception that the youth are allowed to have one activity every year to raise money for camp: locally, that’s at the church-owned campground up in the mountains that the kids put many volunteer hours into cleaning up after the CZU Complex fire burned the facilities down a few years ago. Most of those redwoods have begun to green out again, thank goodness.

They have really earned getting to go and to see the forest renew year by year after the devastation.

Last year there was a carwash.

Today was a party. Balloon animals for the little ones and showing them how to make them, cotton candy, come have fun.

We had baked goods by volunteers. Those, you paid for, one of two prices: Original, and Generous, trying to meet everybody’s budgets. First claim first served.

And a silent auction: a picture of the thing offered and a sign-up sheet to put your bid on. Dog walking by one of the teens, water your plants while you’re away. Lessons in various languages. A tour of Filoli Gardens.

Sue likes to knit socks and offered to knit a pair to fit.

I offered a Malabrigo Mecha hat.

The dad of the now-grown Eli, who used to take care of my mango tree when we were away and who loves the teal hat I knit his son, took one look at the blue twin to it and made sure that that was going to be his and made my day.

Someone wrote down $10 for Sue’s socks and probably thought they were being generous for a pair of socks.

She was going to have to bid a whole lot higher than that if she wanted those. After the huge expenses of this past week I hadn’t been going to spend a dime but I knew she wasn’t offering even the price of the yarn (unless it was a really good sale and/or old stash.) But how would she know that.

How about a different number to look at. After that it’s up to her (and hey, I would dearly love a pair from Sue’s hands.)

I got pulled away to family errands before I found out if I’d won but I was assured I would be emailed and could take care of it then if I did.

To quote the good doctor (as in Suess), Who sees who sew whose new socks, sir? You see Sue sew Sue’s new socks, sir!

Sue’s note said pick your size and color. I think forest green sounds good.

That 7mm kidney stone that they hospitalized him for five weeks ago and then it moved and stopped hurting but wouldn’t go away?

It finally, finally got laser-sprinted out of there today.

A few hours later, we took him to the wound care doctor he sees twice a week, who looked at his foot and was pleased at the improvement.

There’s a batch of chocolate in the melanger in celebration. And typing this I just realized–it’s being stone-ground. I’ll see myself out…

Saw a little boy at Costco, alone in the aisle in that initial blink of time but knowing where his mommy was and steadfastly heading her way, slowly dragging the near-size-equivalent to a favorite blankie bunched up and trailing across the floor behind him.

It was a plastic outer bag holding two quite large loaves of bread and he was going slowly as he pulled about 10% of his weight along.

Are crusts allowed on peanut butter sandwiches? Jelly or honey? These are the important questions one needs to know.

Re the electrician just before he left: he looked out the window, not used to seeing that house on the next block from this side, and wondered out loud if he had the right one and if I knew: Did you get new neighbors recently?

Yes, in that house, confirming the one he thought it was.

We worked there! They had us take out all the old lights and rewire it for brighter.

I burst out laughing and exclaimed, So YOU’RE the one!!! And laughed and laughed and laughed. And then explained that, Oh yes. They ARE bright.

And they leave them on all night and they shine into our bedroom. (We’re talking like five streetlights, hon, but I didn’t say that. But he knew.)

His face started doing an oops but I was still laughing so he was laughing too and it’s no biggie because we’ve got those transom windows covered now, not to my satisfaction but good enough.

And now as of the past month or so they’ve finally started closing their curtains every night anyway. It was random the first year–they did tend to turn the intensity of their lights down once they saw ours go out–but still mostly frankly terrible, while we debated solutions the two of us could live with.

So rather suddenly, after a year, it’s not a problem. I’ve no idea why the change but I’ve been wanting to thank them–while thinking I’d probably be a better neighbor if I just keep my mouth shut unless they bring it up. (I still don’t like our transom coverings. I’d still love to take them down. We’ll see.)

And now I have an excuse to try again to connect in person: we have a great electrician in common. And this year’s crop of squirrels has not yet discovered that my pomegranates are edible once you get past the thorns. Just a little more ripening to go…

The phone rang this afternoon.

It was the office of that repairman, demanding to be paid. I was stunned, and said I had. And she wanted to know if I wanted him to come back to replace the broken knob on the washer I had asked about. I said I did not. (I had already told him no.)

That’s the one for setting the water level. The machine is stuck on either full or nearly full and when the guy quoted me $400 last week to come back and fix that, yeah, no. Full loads are our thing. Ding #2 on Speed Queen, though: that should never have broken.

So (let’s set up the appointment) when did I want him to come back to do that. I could pay him then.

I did!

I may be deaf but she was determined not to hear.

I gave it to her straight, politely but taking no nonsense: the warranty call on the dryer, their guy doing nothing, his blaming our scorched wall and plug on the lines in a room we’d had custom-built for laundry 31 years ago that had been fine through four dryers all this time, that I’d paid $3000 yesterday to have the room rewired because that dryer had pulled too much voltage and burned our wires, and its sensor had not worked to stop the overheating. And that the electrician yesterday had been so bothered by their guy’s actions that he’d replaced the cord and plug on his own time and out of his own pocket at no charge. I was not happy with their guy’s refusal to repair the dryer, and then his charging me $79.95 for what was supposed to be a warranty call while doing nothing.

That’s what I’m calling about, she said: you need to pay us.

I DID pay him. He told me to write the initials of the company rather than writing it all out. If he says I did not pay it he is lying, or he lost the check, which (and here’s where she would have known how angry I was had she known me) is not my problem. I paid $79.95. I’d be happy to confirm that with my bank for you.

I will call him, she told me.

She called back almost as fast as she’d hung up. Yes he said I had paid it. Did I want him to come back to repair that knob?

I could not believe she was actually trying again, and answered, I do not intend to do business with your company ever again.

She tried to haggle her way towards–whatever. I told her, Have a good day. And hung up.

—————-

Okay. Now. I have to give you the antidote to all that.

When I am slogging through peach tree afghan rows on the needles, I reward myself in finger puppets: at the end of each row I put one on top of whatever book I’m reading so that at the end of the day I have a little zoo cheering me on for all the work I got done, while at the same time that visual count sometimes keeps me at it to try to get it higher. In the morning I put them back down on the couch to start over. It lets me think of the knitters in Peru, making all those little toys to make some child in the world happy, which makes me happy.

There tends to be a rotating cast there. Funny how that happens.

Yesterday, paying the electrician and thanking him very much for the 18 man-hours of work between the two of them on such a hot day, I found myself suddenly asking, Do you have kids?

Yes, he said, surprised and suddenly beaming, I have a daughter. She’s six.

I reached over to that pile. Is she into ponies? as a small yellow horse with a white mane in little loops came to hand.

YES! His eyes were big, like, How did you know?!

I was a little girl who was into ponies, too, I told him.

And he went off with the biggest smile on his face, looking forward to her and his wife’s delight to make up for his long day.

(Scrolling down a bit) I didn’t blog about the dryer repair guy? Call it Thumper’s Admonition. He came, he fixed nothing, he called the blackened plug cosmetic and said it wasn’t covered, and he ignored my pointing out the melted lint trap cover that had been far from the wall as proof that the dryer had been getting too hot and random on the timer, and said our wiring had fried the dryer and that it was our fault it had overheated. Charged me $79.95 for refusing to repair the visible damage, refused to even consider that their dryer had scorched my house, said nothing was under the warranty, and walked away.

With a thank you to the Anne who sent me a note about it, I found out that if you turn the dial counter-clockwise on a Speed Queen old fashioned knob style dryer, it breaks the timer and the dryer overheats. It plays equally easily in either direction but you absolutely must only ever turn it clockwise.

How would you ever know? Even if you proclaim, Read the manual!, how would you trust any visiting guests to know that they will destroy the machine and burn down the house if they turn the dial in a direction it’s perfectly happy to turn in?

Today the electrician and his apprentice came for the wiring the dryer had fried.

Turns out that when we added on the laundry room and specified we wanted it wired for an electric dryer, the guy had used aluminum wire to connect it up to the existing copper wire.

You can do that, our new guy said, but you must mark where the change is and it has to be done very very carefully with the right materials. But there’s no marking. There’s no way to know what he did where. (There are other markings on the outside breaker box that were done in pencil and time and exposure have made them illegible. So there’s that.)

He was gratified that Richard knew exactly what he was talking about. (Richard in high school wired his dad’s addition and it passed inspection.)

It had been fine for 31 years till the timer on this dryer started acting funky.

So. The dryer had fried the wiring at the receptacle. Keep it safe. New copper wiring. The choice was to tear out the wall most of the way along one side of the house–or run it out and through a particular type of specialized pipe over the roof. Pipe it is. They were off to go buy it.

It was 88F out there. The job took them about nine hours.

At the end, he had me come in and see the new receptacle. And! There was a new dryer plug and the entire cord it connected to–neither of which he charged us for, he just did it because he could and because what the repairman had done just didn’t feel right to him.

He plugged it in. He had me turn it on. It worked! There was nothing in it so we didn’t leave it on for very long. Off.

And then there was–a sound.

Me, being so deaf, I thought he’d dropped a small tool, and he had, earlier, and he picked it up, but said no, that wasn’t it, it was a big boom, did you hear it? to the other guy coming in just then. He had. Richard was coming around the corner at the other end of the hall just then and said, I heard it!

The two buttons, for power and for steam boost, were now jammed in at the top with nobody having done anything to them.

It couldn’t be turned on again.

His extra charge for that heavy-duty cord and plug and the time spent installing them on our dryer?

Zero.

Last night at dinner our daughter was recounting some experiences and thanking her daddy for teaching her that science is about the how, religion, the why.

Today one of the speakers at church was a scientist at Stanford. He came bounding up to the stand with a little planter full of beautiful small white flowers, like he couldn’t wait to share this! He talked about discovery and learning and how glorious it was to gain new insights into this beautiful world G_d had created for us to live in.

And then he held up his pretty little flowers for all to see. They were petunias (clearly one of the mini varieties).

But what made them different, he said, though we couldn’t see it yet, was that they had been given the gene from a firefly: they glow in the dark.

Then he invited everybody who was curious to come to the mother’s nursing lounge (where I bring chocolate every week, that’s my assignment) because that was the darkest room in the building that could hold a number of people. (I wondered for a moment about kids finding out what else that room held, but I don’t think any noticed.)

First he had one of the women knock on the door and peek in to make sure we weren’t interrupting anybody.

That is the first time in my life that my camera, not my mom or dad from when I was little, scolded me to hold still for the picture. It managed to capture this much.

So. Cool!

(Ed. to correct what my hearing missed: this NPR article says the firefly gene didn’t take well enough so they used other bioluminescence genes from a mushroom and a fungus. But you can actually buy these now.)

Edited again to add after reading NGS’s comment: so if animals eat them, will their poop glow?

The bright red orb caught the setting sun brilliantly. The camera only wanted to pay attention to the apricot and washed it out but in real life that cherry tomato was striking against that dark soil and I did a double take for a split second: how did that get there?!

Bird or squirrel? Something out there wanted jewelry to dress up the young tree for the Homecoming dance.

(Edited to add, Well, huh. If I click on the photo it goes sideways but shows the tomato.)

Got my flu shot, got my covid shot. One of my friends had to jump through the hoop of getting her doctor to write a prescription for hers, which is silly and I hope we can get back to a normal, functioning CDC and NIH and basic public health policies again, but I can just imagine that doctor feeling grateful that her patient was pro-actively asking to do the right thing.

It feels good to have done my part to make the world a little healthier for every person I encounter.

It’s one of those old family stories that it turns out not all our kids knew.

So for the record.

My grandfather was elected Senator in 1951 and served four terms. My grandparents became close friends with Prescott and Dottie Bush.

Grampa was in his 90s and retired for some time when one of his grandkids was going to make Eagle Scout and the proud parents asked if he might speak a bit there.

I have to give a speech! I have to give a speech! He fretted and worried about it; it had been awhile. He was a good writer himself but I imagine he missed having his Congressional staff to vet it for him after having been able to rely on their expertise for so long.

The stress got to him and suddenly he’d lost decades. A TIA? A stroke? Don’t know. He was hospitalized. (Later, the family would tell him it was okay, the Eagle ceremony was over, they were so sorry he’d missed it and that he did not have to give a speech. Grampa bounced back to being himself and was discharged. But on with the story.)

President George H.W. Bush, knowing how close his folks had been to them, called that hospital to offer his best wishes.

Grampa was gobsmacked by the outrageous swagger of the kid he remembered–what on earth did he think he was trying to pull on him!?–and exclaimed, EISENHOWER is President! He slammed down the phone.

The hospital switchboard cut in with an apologetic, I’m very sorry, Mr. President. There seems to be a problem with the connection.

He made himself a millionaire by the unsheathed swords of his words and today he died by the sword that he’d been okay with–for others.

I don’t care how hateful he got paid to be, shooting him was devastating to the entire country no matter any political party. We don’t want to be this. We don’t want his kids growing up without their daddy. We don’t want his wife to be the widow she now is. We absolutely don’t want more of this violence in response; for those with the memories, one 1960s is enough to have lived through.

Were there retaliatory threats after the shootings of the Democratic Minnesota lawmakers? There were not. There was profound grief.

And today that’s the whole of it. Profound grief.

Where I differed with the one killed is that I believe it IS the guns, stupid, having lived through an age when gun culture was very very different from what it is now and knowing we can have regulations and that those have, in the past, been fine by the then-Supreme Court. And Congress.

The guy they initially held because he said he was confessing to it? That was a Republican who claimed he’d shot the Republican. A relative of mine who ran for office there said that every time there was any official Republican anything in that district, that man showed up and tried to get attention for being there while clearly not being all there.

But the real crazy guy was whoever out there thought that choosing to be the absolute worst of America would somehow bring forth the best in America.

Today was the last test result, the last appointment on the whole endometrial thing.

But first the oncology surgeon had to tell me that he’d taken that Kit Donnell peach home and shared it with his wife: he told me emphatically, That was the best! peach I have eaten. In. My. Life! He wanted to make sure he remembered the name of the variety right. He thanked me several times for telling him about Andy’s Orchard.  I looked it up, he told me: August.

He was clearly very much looking forward to next August’s crop.

The nurse had the biggest smile on her face.

Baby Crawford is the other really good one, I told him.

Oh! He was instantly on it, getting this down. He was not going to miss that either! Baby? Crawford.

I turned to her and apologized that I hadn’t brought two peaches last time, and she laughed hard and I thought, You were thinking the same thing. I should have. But I didn’t know you were going to be there. And I didn’t have enough left to bring a bunch.

So, on to business. No cancer. No virus that might someday cause cancer. No surgery. Fill this prescription to help with the atrophal shedding.

I told him, Plot twist: after two and a half years of bleeding, it is somehow almost almost gone. (How to tell G_d a joke: tell Him, You weren’t going to let up on that symptom till that man and his wife and maybe that nurse discovered that farm and that fruit, were you? Because those peaches are divine.)

At the last he said, with the very warmest of smiles, And then I never want to see you again. For your sake.