Him, looking at CalFire pictures of where his friend lives up in the mountains and finding things mostly okay in that area: “There’s the poultry farm.”

Me, being deaf: “Upholstery farm? Is that where they tan the naugahides?”

Back when our kids were teens, Richard’s older sister had been feeling unwell and after running lots of tests, her doctor sent her to a hematologist.

Her first inkling of what she was in for was when she had to walk past the oncology sign to get to the man’s office. Nobody had said anything about cancer. It was her fortieth birthday.

And thus began her fight with a type of lymphoma that, at the time, had had zero cures and three known cases of remission ever, and it was not caught early.

They can cure it now. Back then, they kept coming up with new treatments that kept giving her a little more time. Her youngest was eleven, and while they were telling her to put her affairs in order she wanted to see her kids grow up.

Eight years later, she got her youngest off to college and saw a son married to a good woman. Six weeks later she was gone.

Richard had just started a new job when he heard her diagnosis and had no accrued time off but his boss’s reaction was, Go. Now. Go see your sister. I don’t want to see you for a week.

The fact that it was summer vacation made it easy to throw the kids in the car and drive to Salt Lake City.

We did that long drive so many summers after, wanting to see her while we could, wanting to be supportive in person as much as possible.

And every time we drove home, the Sierra Nevadas gave way to flat farmland and signs like the ones beckoning, Pistachios $2/lb!

(Those were the immature nuts that were closed as tight as a fist and a royal pain to crack. You want the ones that smile for the camera, you pay $3 but they didn’t tell you that till you got out of your car, and if you wanted them shelled that was a whole ‘nother thing altogether.)

The family of knitting friends who immigrated from Iran own one of those pistachio orchards, that being a traditional crop back home, and I’ve often wondered if we ever passed their farm. Wonderful people.

Michelle is doing the long drive home from her sister’s and asked us if we wanted her to pick up anything along the way. We knew where she’d be coming through, so I said something about maybe pistachios–don’t take the time for us, take care of yourself first and foremost, but if you want to stop and if you’re interested, sure, I’d be interested.

Some hours later the phone rang.

She was sorry but there would be no farm stops on this trip.

No problem at all, we weren’t counting on it–it was just wistful memories.

Because, she said: farm after farm had great big Trump signs. And she just couldn’t.

And I wondered, do they want so hard to stay unconflicted and unchallenged in their bubble that they’re willing to kill off half their summer tourist income for it? Not to mention, and all that for someone who’s tried so hard to take away the healthcare they maybe have no idea how much they might need someday?

I guess they do.

So, yeah, I never made the connection between that night in the hospital, Lee’s photography, and the need to knit fish on a turquoise background before, but what was supposed to be a post about sourdough last night suddenly helped me connect all those long-time dots that were back there somewhere in my brain waiting to be found. Who knew.

On the food experiment: Trader Joe’s sells a frozen spinach artichoke heart cheese dip that’s quite good. I had some thawed and ready in the fridge.

Yesterday was about seeing how well that would go with sourdough.

I let the dough rise overnight as one does with the thought that I would mix the stuff in in the morning (and give myself one last chance to back out of the idea.)

Which means it was cold right out of the fridge going into the bread dough which wanted warmth.

Which meant that, since I didn’t do the smart thing and nuke the dip a bit, the usual one-hour morning rise was going to need to be a whole lot longer. But that would have made it really sour and taken an unknowable amount of time and I had plans for the day, so I just popped it in the oven anyway. I ended up with a dense focaccia variant. It was good but not excellent; next time just make normal sourdough toast and dip it in the dip.

And then on with the morning.

Man, I have never seen a line like that at Goodwill to drop stuff off! At least they let us–they weren’t taking any more donations for awhile there. Closets are definitely being cleaned out.

There were two fire trucks parked on the road a half block from Andy’s. It was hard to see if there was smoke in a pocket of the hills above or if that’s just where the wind captured an extra bit of what was everywhere anyway, but either way, CalFire was ready to be right on it.

Ripe Green Gage plums are one of the best fruits on the planet and well worth the trip to Morgan Hill.

Spent a long time going through yarns and fish photos and measuring and eyeballing and I think the next two are figured out. I kept thinking, as I often have, that what I really need is my friend Lee’s pictures from his dive trips. (His ability to sketch would be nice, too.)

He and Phyl have from time to time offered us much-enjoyed evenings of seeing his underwater photography and one of those times was not long before Crohn’s put me in the hospital the first time. The doctor had me on morphine, and this time I was the one on a trip–with Lee’s tropical fish lazily meandering around me in the very brightest colors against a turquoise background, keeping me company all night, keeping me amused and distracted from the severe pain and feeling less alone because all of that was because of happy memories that had come from them.

A friend dropped by this afternoon with homemade jam from her fruit trees; I sent her off with a cooled loaf of cranberry pumpkin sourdough because I always know that one will be good.

We were kind of ready for something else, though. I was paging through my Artisan Sourdough Made Simple tonight and I didn’t really want to do it this way I wanted to try that and now there’s an experiment in the kitchen rising overnight and if it turns out fabulous you’ll hear all about it tomorrow. And if it doesn’t we’ll pretend this paragraph was never written.

In my dreams.

This was a few rows ago. The sides are actually straight, the colors are brighter.

But at long, long last I stopped second-guessing myself and finished the first dolphin.

The chart I was working from was presented in squares. Knitting is rectangular. But there was a knitted scarf on Ravelry from that chart and it seemed good, so I went with it, and now I’m thinking I should have trusted my own eyeballing and added another row to the height of the body.

Quibbles, quibbles.

Basically, I’m thinking it looks longer than it should and that that makes it vaguely shark-like. And it’s so gray, and gray would so dominate if I made a pod of them.

Which means twenty more inches of googling fish pictures.

A month ago, a diving enthusiast friend was naming the fish species in delight as I held up the afghan–the very highest praise I could ever have hoped for. I aspire to keep whatever the next ones may be, real, too.

If you have any favorites let me know because I’m just guessing my way around here.

Where the firemen built a break.

Where my kids went to camp, growing up, at a church-owned property shared by youth groups from across the region. Where our ward (like many) held several family campouts. I can still picture Peter cheerfully flipping pancakes.

I’m quite surprised there was anything left of the dining hall at all.

Everybody needs a freezer box hideout to make goofy faces in.

And to grab your daddy’s cup at the table. (She’s watching carefully where it went.)

She’s used Doordash before.

Doordash didn’t realize she’d moved out of the Bay Area.

The two restaurants had nearly identical names.

And so she found out her order had been put in 800 miles away at a place she’d never heard of. She tried to cancel it but the restaurant said they’d already entered it into their Doordash account, so, so sorry, too late.

So she told them she was going to tell us to go pick it up.

Given how they acted when I got there, they were clearly hoping nobody would come.

When I said who I was, who she was, why I was there and what I was doing, the guy at the counter reacted like that was the most creative way to scam a free meal he’d ever heard of. He was, in a word, rude. But I wasn’t going anywhere. I finally had her talk to him while I held the phone so he wouldn’t have to touch it. He conferred with someone else–and they started cooking that meal. Half an hour after it was supposed to have been picked up, because I’d gotten the message late.

No diners are allowed to eat inside, but all the pickups were inside and I was already there, and technically I wasn’t dining, so they told me to sit in the darkest corner where the lights were turned off while they worked on it.

The oldest person in the kitchen came out from time to time to smile benevolently. He was not wearing the mandated mask. He seemed to approve of knitting, however, and though silent was the one friendly face in the place.

My yarn was dark green and my needles were black and Mecha’s single ply splits too easily but that’s the project that was in the purse and I did make good progress on it.

I was careful not to so much as touch the top of the table. No point in creating extra work for them.

I got the order home…

I don’t know that they usually put that much and I mean that much! heat into every single dish. Given that what was ordered was originally intended to be shared with small children, I do have my doubts.

Nothing like some good sourdough out of the oven. (Another pumpkin cranberry cinnamon loaf.)

The last two days we had a normal, San Francisco Bay-style marine layer that cooled things down and helped the firefighters and cleared the air a great deal–and the critters got at a few of the ripening figs despite my best efforts.

Today, as containment continues, the smoke was back, the air was gray, and the figs got left alone. They are browning up rapidly now, winding up the season.

So I guess my observation that fire air keeps the critters away seems to hold. I have high hopes for ripe ones for breakfast picked at their morning sweetest.

I was going to go to Andy’s to get some late season peaches, too, while they last, but my tire picked up a nail.

Fortunately easily dealt with–I lucked out, the idiot light came on on the freeway after I hit a rough patch with debris and I could have been stranded there but I was able to get it to my mechanic with no problem.

But it was not what I’d planned. You do not drive out of Silicon Valley on a Friday after 2:30 if you don’t have to. Not even during a pandemic.

It does. I followed that photo pretty well but it looks upside down. I’m going to have to duplicate-stitch over a few waywards there.

Wishing safety and refuge to all in the path of the hurricane. (The Washington Post is offering updates for free, no subscription needed.)

There’s a long way to go but our closest fire evacuations have begun to lift.

One more birthday picture. (Food powder based.)

Not a single apple on the ground for days. Nothing pecked.

Not a single fig taken before its time–and up till this point, my success rate at getting to pick and eat a fully ripe one has been a total of exactly one single one. If I leave them that one last day for perfecting, they’re gone.

Remember these past years where I’ve put a fake dead crow out at night (so they don’t see me and don’t think I killed it) to keep the real ones from wanting to come in my yard? I was never sure that really worked, but I didn’t do that this year and this is the first year I can remember where I’ve had flocks of crows fly over my house. Morning or evening: every single time I go outside. It’s like they know I know where the fruit is so they’re checking it out–and it could well be, given that crows evolved scavenging the edges of human civilization and cast offs, so much so that they can read human faces and expressions as well as a dog can.

The trees they liked to be just far enough away in next door are gone now, and maybe that’s part of it, but they didn’t start coming directly overhead and in waves until things started to ripen.

The ability of–something–to tear through and rearrange the bird netting has been impressive, and the breaking of young fig branches in the process, disconcerting.

Not a single crow around since the fires started. It seems they don’t want to be high overhead in all that smoke. One single squirrel briefly came in view, for that matter, and it did not want to run fast nor exert itself but I still told it it had to leave. It did.

Rather than coming fleeing down out of the hills in numbers, at least this far out the wildlife seems simply to have vanished.

Not a single apple.

Not a single fig, not even the ripening one right there clearly in easy reach where the netting doesn’t go that far. Anything could have swiped it. Nothing did.

I’ll take it.

Someone officially turned one yesterday and she wants to share the celebration.

Some friends of ours had two little boys, 2 and 4, and the wife was expecting a girl–and suddenly had to have emergency surgery and everybody held their breath and prayed hard for mother and child both.

Months later, their daughter is here and safe and sound and her mother has recovered. Yay.

Restrictions are only one person at a time can go in a house that’s for sale and the realtor and buyer must come in separate cars, and all that was a pain, but they did it, they just bought a house to call their forever home. They moved out of their apartment and up into the beautiful, redwood-covered mountains last weekend.

Tuesday they were bringing their kids home from the grandparents’ and the road was full of people streaming out of there. Huh. Well, nobody had given them any kind of evacuation order so they put their boys to bed but out of an abundance of caution started gathering whatever they might need because you never know.

Forty-five minutes later they got that order to get out and scrammed. In the ordinary chaos of having just moved, they did not find everything they wished they had but it sounds like they got everybody’s favorite blankies.

Yay for grandparents close enough to go to.

Yay for having bought fire insurance.

Thank heavens for firefighters who do what so few of us could.

They know a hotspot flared up near their house but that it got tamped down, and right now that’s all they know.

Whatever surgery life performs on their expectations in the immediate term, they’re safe and sound and everybody is, in every way that matters, doing well. May all those tens of thousands of other people in the same boat be so as well.

Photo by, as far as I can tell, Iris Brewster, because she credits the photographers in her other pictures. It does embiggen if you want to see better.

Mom? I still don’t like brussel sprouts. I’m sorry. I’ve tried, I know you’ve tried, I’ve olive-oiled and roasted and reminded myself they’re healthy and all that, but they still are what they are.  It helps that I’m married to someone who doesn’t like them even more than I don’t like them. Except at least they’re better at your house because you’re a far better cook.

But some came in our weekly produce bag last Saturday. I put them off for most of the week, which surely didn’t improve their flavor any, but there is no room in our fridge for more than one gigantic Milk Pail box’s worth so I finally roasted them last night and they stank up the house so bad it still lingered in the morning. I even ate one. Richard hoped I wouldn’t ask him to. The rest are in the fridge, all ready for us to magically change our minds and be thrilled and devour them after a bit of a zap.

But this is why my conscience could not simply throw them out without trying and at least tasting them. That’s the sun up there and a fire behind that ridge. Click to really see.

And yet still they feed us.