When I was growing up my mom baked a lot of pies, and one of my favorites was one that it surprised me that none of my friends had ever had.

They thought the very idea was weird.

But then, my folks took us to pick-your-own farms and the grapes that went into those pies were not your bland Thompson seedless: they were meant to have flavor.

They were surely geared towards the DIY winemaker types but we were Mormons so we made juice and we got pie.

All of which came back to me when my friend Catherine, delighted at my delivering some peaches, gifted me with some grapes from her garden. Then when she saw my reaction she put more in the bag. Then more. After all, I’d done that drive so she didn’t have to. (We have a standing arrangement that if they’ll let me buy that many, I’ll pick up a lug for her, too.)

Hers were about the size of cranberries. I ran a handful at a time in my palm, searching for stems and hoping I got them all. It reminded me of processing sour cherries–a bit of work but so worth the effort.

The pie is in the oven and I put too many in and the top fell apart because I rolled it too thin and it is overflowing a little and the only recipe I found was for seeded Concord grapes from my 1952 Betty Crocker so it’s all guesswork. But since my mom used that cookbook I figured it was the one to start with. Their 1 1/3 c sugar became 1 1/4 because I know their editors went heavy on the stuff in everything but I didn’t dare mess with it too much on the first try.

It wasn’t done as I was typing this but pulling it out of the oven to see if it was, I dipped a spoon at the edge to see what I was getting.

Wow that was good.

Even better, now that it’s out.

I know who needs to try some of this. Hey Catherine!

Her mother had an apricot tree and she misses it.

Which is how the latest Anya seedling very happily found its new home. Funny how a random conversation can lead to fruitful discoveries about each other!

We were standing around not quite eating yet, I was listening to other family members and I didn’t even see him take one. I had quartered a heaping large serving bowl’s worth of Baby Crawford peaches right before time to leave so they would be as perfect as possible.

It was the motion that caught my eye: his face did this sudden downward-nod of someone caught by surprise as a soft “Oh wowwww!” came out of his mouth. He had not been expecting that.

I had also brought a smaller bowl of green gauge plums and none of them knew what they were. The guy’s daughter biting into one of those had the same reaction as her dad had had.

Are these from your trees? –Where was this place??

I think we have some new Andy’s Orchard enthusiasts.

When it was time to go, between the eleven adults and the baby everybody wanted to see and the three year old being adorable, we found ourselves lingering alongside the staircase without quite reaching the door. The toddler was in her daddy’s arms at that point, and I softly sang to her, So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen good night!

She stared at me in delight and an expression her daddy explained for me: astonishment.

Because every single night at home at their own house across the country, they sing that song to her. While going up their staircase one step at a time. ‘The sun has gone to bed and so must I.’ And with that they put her to bed.

And here was her great aunt whom she has no previous memory of meeting before tonight having no idea of any of this singing it to her in front of her grandparents’ staircase at bedtime.

The phone rang.

Our nephew is in town visiting his in-laws, letting them play with the baby we haven’t met yet, and his parents flew in, too; would we like to join them all for dinner tomorrow?

(Is this a trick question. Some of my favorite people.)

What should we bring? I asked Richard to ask him.

Uh, uh, (I pictured him calling over to his mother-in-law and then wondering why he chose the words that popped out of his mouth next.) “Fine fruit.”

I guffawed when Richard conveyed that to me.

Andy Mariani considers his Baby Crawford his best peach and this year the crop was good. Two days after picking them up Friday will mean peak ripeness. Trying to remember, was it The French Laundry or Alice Water’s Chez Panisse that after a prix fixe dinner that would be for most of us a once-in-a-lifetime experience (I’ve never been to either so this is strictly hearsay) they’ve been known to serve, for the exclamation point of a dessert, a perfect August Andy Mariani peach.

Fine fruit? I think we can make that happen.

I was unloading the car from Andy’s Orchard as the mail truck pulled up nearby.

After weeks in the 70s, 88F was hot, with a slight fire shadow to the air even though we’re hours away from the worst of those.

Going and putting down the heavy lug of peaches and wrestling the top open was not something I could do quickly enough as he was passing by and those could use a day to reach perfection anyway so I offered him a Green Gage. It had rolled out of the bag onto the seat of the car and had gone from there to my pocket. Easy to get to.

He held the little yellow/green two-bite snack in his hands wondering out loud, What is it?

It’s a plum. I just got back from the farmer’s in Morgan Hill.

Did you pick it?

No, I bought it, but it was picked today or yesterday.

Sounded good to him!

Just then my next-door neighbor came running up holding out a bottle of cold water. She had seen him walking past with his shirt unbuttoned in the heat, which I’ve never seen him do in all the years he’s been on this route, and she had to make sure he was okay.

So he got something to wash his miniature plum down with and if he threw the seed in my front yard I say good for him. Maybe it’ll sprout. Green Gage plums are rarely grown on a commercial scale because the trees are difficult and production is iffy–but when they do, they are so good.

But what was really really good was seeing my neighbor seeing that need (I was sorry I had not) and immediately doing something about it. She’s a peach.

The peach color that looked pink once it was set against the green: you know, peach blossoms are pink. Just in case anyone asks.

(That’s my Baby Crawford tree from a few years ago.)

It suddenly hit me this morning that what I didn’t want to call fear–but still, it was a nagging, ongoing sense of dread–all the angst around meeting a new surgeon in two weeks, about having a more major surgery than expected, not at Stanford but in a hospital where I knew no one nor my way around and there would be no old friends who were nurses suddenly popping up, about what the results might be, about the pain meds, the recovery, the being made to get up and walk after they’ve cut into you–

–last time, they got me upright and I insisted, Take my blood pressure before you try to make me do more.

It was 73 over something like 30 and they decided okay, let’s get that up to 80/40 first.

The stress that had triggered last year’s eye infection to resurface.

All of that.

It didn’t matter anymore. There was no problem anymore. There was just something to go through and then go live happily ever after and that would be that.

Finding and rescuing that beautiful little finch had in some way I cannot describe somehow rescued me, too.

Most mornings, I wouldn’t have been looking out that window for another half an hour–but today, I did.

Two Bewick’s wrens caught my eye, and I realized with a start that I hadn’t seen one in several months. And as they danced around and I delighted in watching them they drew me to see…

…Oh goodness. How long had that poor thing been there.

A finch was tangled in netting around my blueberries that I’d thought was too fine a mesh for a bird to dart through. It was caught up to its shoulder and around. Oh, man…

I stooped down next to it. It struggled to get away. I put my hand under its feet so it wouldn’t be hanging by its shoulder and wing like that and that gave it something to push against to try harder to get away. Flutterflutterflutter, with the strands cutting in. No blood at least. I had never seen the underside of a finch wing from that close up before.

But then it held still for a moment.

I looked at it and it looked at me–and the little bird closed its eye slowly for a moment. (I could only see the one from there.) I hoped not in pain but to rest ever so briefly.

I felt somehow trusted. By a wild thing. I felt its feet on my hand. I fervently hoped I could do right by it.

Then it struggled again against the strands because it had to. It is the nature of it.

I assessed: what I needed was scissors to cut that plastic so as not to jerk the little thing around when breaking it free, but I couldn’t risk the harm of walking away and coming back out and its panicking or hanging.

So as carefully as I could, I balanced that sweet little finch on my knee and worked on breaking those strands with both hands, wanting so much not to hurt it, glad that at least the netting was that fine.

It knew before I did and suddenly it burst out of there: not to the camphor tree above but over to the step outside the bedroom door, facing me. It caught my eye, and only then was it off and away.

I walked inside marveling that I had even been there at that time. That my favorite Bewick’s wrens had not only come but had kept it company till help arrived. And they’d made it so it did.

Even the sparrow in its fall is known to Him: that scripture became vividly real to me today.

A comic strip, of all things, helped me learn something new about my late father-in-law.

I mentioned today’s The Buckets to Richard and the fact that the author chimed in that this is pretty much what had happened to his family member.

Richard remembered the days: Oh yeah, my dad used to grab his badge when scammers came to the door. They couldn’t get away fast enough.

Starting at the Eisenhower Administration, his dad was a lawyer in the Justice Department.

First photo: yesterday, but I forgot to hit post.

Today:

 When you want a peach color and you have a peach yarn and you put it in in single stitches separated by those other colors and they flip it to pink just because they can.

The photos did a good job of capturing the change exactly.

Color peer pressure: I always expect it, and it always surprises me.

Welcome to August!

This very tall sunflower bowed over in an arch to welcome in the best of the summer with a nod and hello.

Being way behind on my inner deadline, I started the day with this picture and the determination to finish that first tree.

I finished it.

Oh wait–no, I think I’ll add one more row and then a half row on that side.

…Okay, *now* it’s done. I was right. I like that better.

The New York Times did a piece on a home, if that’s the word, in New York. The dentist who left Ukraine during a prior administration wanted a piece of, say, St. Peter’s Basilica, he said, y’know, that kind of presentation.

How much had he spent building on the lot of the razed Victorian, they wanted to know.

Oh, I gave up counting after $10M, he waved that away.

So. For $25,000,000 you too can rival Felon47’s gold-leafed-everything. Although I do have to say I like that stained-glass star up there, forgive me, I do.

And! A bucket shower! (Somehow the Times did not include a photo. I mean, like, everybody know what they meant, right?)

What. Is a bucket shower.

I got suckered in. I googled. I found photo #17. I…I…

Do you have to donate to the ALS Foundation every time you use it? That’s all I can figure out.

Oh thank you Etsy. It’s artisan-made, it’s not mass-produced, just like you used to be all about. And you totally guessed what I wanted to see.

Or how about this one, with the cobra climbing the stick? (Look at the smirk on that thing.)

Or maybe not so much.

Actually, I laughed–and then went, wait.

What if some idiot tried to shoot it out of my hand to save me?

Just raising a little cane here.

(Fusses with photos, wonders why they’re not posting.) You’re just going to have to take my word for it that those two cherry tomato plants are going all out and it’s a good thing that one of my friends is looking forward to being shared with because even the zucchini plants can’t keep up with their output. (Edited in the morning: Okay, there it is!)

Giving or receiving warm ripe homegrown tomatoes–that is one of the best parts of summer.