The first cherry blossom of the year.

The Amazon driver had been called in at the last minute to help with the unexpected crush of deliveries. Which we found out when Michelle was at the door thanking her with feeling: her friends had so hoped that she would get it in time to put it in her luggage because shipping to their country was so prohibitive.

It had made it in under two hours before she was to leave for the airport.

And somehow those two very rushed women found the time to share that brief exchange that made the one glad she’d filled that extra shift and both of them glad to see the other so glad–and even more, knowing that the recipients at flight’s end were going to be absolutely thrilled.

There were four of them at first. Quite docile. They were interested in the starter pots filled with composted lobster and crab shells where the seeds had never sprouted–but not the pots where they had–they were exploring every place in them where there was any indentation in the soil and twice, an abdomen throbbed downward into such a spot.

What on earth (literally) were they doing? There were no flowers there.

Well then it must not have been honeybees, he said.

I went back out and took pictures, this one being the clearest. I looked them up just to be sure. Classic worker bees from everything I could find.

At one point there were at least six, and since they were investigating right where the seedlings are that I’m tending to every day it seemed like this could escalate quickly.

Our elderly neighbors years ago had honeybees move into their compost pile, and after I saw them swarming one afternoon above the fence between our yards, the husband told me he was setting up an actual hive for them. We chatted about how my fruit trees would help feed them well.

Jim passed away and I haven’t asked his widow if that is still there.

I don’t want a break-off hive setting up camp…quite…there.

So I moved those two sets of starter pots several feet away. Nudge, nudge. I probably should have taken them farther but first I wanted to see if they would follow them.

They ran away from my approach but came back, looking for them. One persisted for an hour as the sun faded, zigzagging back and forth over where the one had been, then the other. It’s like the figure-8 dance they teach elementary school kids about had become a mobius strip that had broken. Straight lines back and forth where IS that thing it was just here guys I promise it was!

I tried to gently chase it in the right direction–they’re right over there!–but it wasn’t having it.

One of those sets was apricot kernels that had never sprouted; I think the other was tomatoes that didn’t, but the windstorms blew my markers away.

No loss there, others grew and I have definitely enough of both.

I’m delighted to have proof that the honeybees are still around.

But maybe not quite so close to the back door? (Just don’t burrow into the house, that’s all I really ask. Hopefully the 17-month-old house paint will discourage that?)

Dislike the drive (freeways in San Francisco are a mess, the Cypress Structure that collapsed in the ’89 quake was never rebuilt) dislike the driving around and around for blocks to find a parking space but for Dandelion Chocolate and celebrating a birthday? Count us in.

And so she and I did. We decided to make it a to go in order to get away from someone who was coughing, but not before getting some finger puppets to some parents whose little kids were antsy waiting for their cocoa. Brought goodies home for her dad.

As we were sitting at the table at home munching away and sipping the last of the hot chocolate I gave a nod towards the calorie count of the day.

Her: When you’re 60 you should just enjoy life!

I guffawed–as she instantly realized her math was off. Oh wait…

“When I’m 64!” (thank you Paul McCartney.)

At that point we both lost it and laughed ourselves breathless. She topped it off with, You should just enjoy life! Not every day! (gesturing towards the Dandelion bag), but, enjoy life!

But see, that’s why I brought a few of their bars home. So we could break off a small bite. Every day! And when we run out we’ll just have to go back. Right?

It was just one of those little pieces of information that kept bugging me for an explanation.

I’ve kept a tab open with the major California reservoir levels listed and with all our storms, found myself checking it every morning: the drought was boring but the anti-drought is shiny and new, I guess? And hopeful.

While Trinity…just sits there. It’s finally gotten up to 51% of normal, as if it were determined to hold onto the essence of droughtiness to remind us not to ever waste a drop. There are a few other reservoirs that are just shy of normal, but they’re all in the southern end of the state while Trinity’s well to the north and really, how on earth could it say it’s half what it should be, much less so far from full after all these storms?

Surely at least the mountains surrounding it will make up for it when things melt, given the 237% of normal snowpack.

And that of course is it. Although it still doesn’t satisfy my sense that it should look better on paper by now. But it will supply plenty of water to the Central Valley farmers over the summer, and that’s the relief that all my staring at that graph had been searching for all along.

I didn’t knit the last two hours or there would have been two done these past two days. Hats were not what I most aspired to be working on, but they are always useful, so, hey.

Well then at least no stockinette stitch, I argued at myself as I picked out the yarn.

Deal.

Note that a dear friend of our daughter’s dropped by last night and found herself leaving with a previously-knit one. They do come quite in handy that way.

This (scroll down a bit and click to the right to keep on going) is some serious and seriously fun crocheting, and it probably even pays the bills.

Meantime, today was the first of two days of the semi-annual World Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with two more two hour sessions to come, Sunday at 9:00 and 1:00 Pacific time.

We were surprised and thrilled to hear a dear friend’s name called out and watched him and a few others come up to the stand in their new roles. He’d mentored one of my kids back in the day and had made all the difference in the world. Such a good man.

I laughed out loud when one fellow by the last name of Bragg said that when he spoke at his first Conference, he mentioned at the beginning of that talk that he’d been asked to speak on humility.

Whereupon his son immediately received a sardonic message from a friend: Really?

Amazon boxes for all three of us today.

Michelle opened one after dinner while we were sitting chatting.

I’ve mentioned how when the pandemic hit, her sister had a baby and a two year old and a suddenly frantically busy job and Michelle decided, I can work from home anywhere, and volunteered to be backup child care. She drove north and spent most of the first two years there.

The trouble with Amazon boxes is that unless you address them to, say, HappyBirthdayAuntie or some such there’s no way to know it’s from someone else if your orders overlap.

She opened it (not knowing it wasn’t time to yet), fully expecting…

Her face. Dumbfounded. She showed it to me. My turn. (Thinking, You didn’t–did you??) I went, Is that…!?

It was. She is now the proud owner of pj’s of colorful unicorns dancing sprightly across a bright pink background. (This would be a novel application of color for her before we even talk about the graphics.)

Me: “Lillian picked it out.” I was so sure. And so proud.

Michelle grinned back: “Just as likely Mathias.”

Because at three and five, bright happy unicorns are everything one could ever hope for.

(Update: an old friend of hers in New Zealand confessed it was her.)

After much smashing of fingers I have finally figured out how to crack a recalcitrant apricot kernel: lay an arm of the nutcracker on a thick oven mitt and press down on the other one with a careful placement of the hands–ie so that it doesn’t come crashing down on your fingertips curled between. Let the mitt take that force.

So if anyone wants to try growing Anya apricot seeds this year and wants not to have to crack them open (or if you don’t care either way for that matter), tell me quick and I’ll save some out for you before I send a bunch out. These are the last I have and with the rains during blossoming, there may not be many or any for next year.

Caramel pecan-topped brownies, dairy free, for the one who didn’t think she wanted anything highly caloric while I was baking tortes for the dinner last night so having butter in them was fine. But the whiffs of baking chocolate…and so today was round two. It was only fair.

Meantime, I have a problem. I’ve fallen for a cooktop from a company that makes commercial kitchens and the lifetime-warranted cookware to go with, multiple patents, etc etc etc and apparently they only recently branched out into the residential kitchen market. It all sounds so good.

But there are no reviews to be found. Only their own descriptions of how excellent and award-winning their customer service is. Given how completely Thermidor messed us over and left us with a half-useless expensive cooktop that should have been repaired under the warranty but was refused, this matters a lot–assuming Hestan lives up to their words.

Which they would have to if no one outside the restaurant business has heard of them and they’re trying to break into a new market. Customer satisfaction is a great, and greatly undertested marketing maneuver. Make a good product, stand behind it, get good publicity. It doesn’t have to be hard.

I’m hoping that’s a point they want to make and not just wishful thinking on my part.

I’m open and eager for all opinions on the subject. Tell me what you think.

The rain let up for awhile. CVS messaged that the prescription was ready. (Run!) Got it. Got the quotes on the awning, both for the four panels if they can be matched (hah! That was two storms ago!) and all fourteen. Got the next hat started and the ends run in on the old one. Baked chocolate tortes for a church dinner tonight.

But the biggest thing I got done today was hauling Rubbermaid tubs full of older stash out of the closet in that tight corner over there, going through them a bit to remind myself what I had (oh THERE’S the cone of wild silk harvested after the worms morphed and hatched that even vegans would be willing to wear! Gorgeous inchiostro color, too!) in order to see if the heavy leftover pieces I thought had been hidden back there for 30 years were actually still there.

They were. I’d thought there was one. There were three.

The contractor asked for the measurements and sounds like they can do the support thing on the cooktop, had I picked one out yet?

We have enough.

And so it looks like we may well end up with the Corian counters awhile yet so that we don’t have to do everything all at once.

Which is just as well: we need to refinish the cabinets and I’d want the new granite to match what they’ll look like then, not just now. (Just a little redder and a little darker, I’m thinking.)

Okay, tomorrow. I’m ready for you, too.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one–but it looks like we’ll be having an atmospheric river pouring down on us Tuesday and Wednesday and a ton of snow in the mountains and there’s a strong wind advisory so everybody should just stay home.

(Hey, it was either talk about the weather or grouse about the clerk at CVS who told me to go wait for the pharmacist to fill my husband’s Rx, and after 35 minutes, my hat was finished, I was regretting not bringing the next ball of yarn–because there’s no way they’d make me wait that long for something the doctor had called in four days ago, right?–when I finally asked them what the status was.

That’s when she told me they had no record of receiving that from the doctor. Even though we got confirmation of it. Even though it’s a regularly scheduled med. And even though she knew I was sitting there that whole time waiting for it, and while I was, someone else was waiting sitting behind me in the vaccination area, not wearing a mask and coughing like crazy. I pulled a fabric divider between us.

But at least I got that hat done, other than running in the ends because I was too annoyed.)

So. Yeah. Coming home from that, there was a new big chunk of tree already fallen, cleared just off the roadway but that had been attached to the tree the day before. I guess it was either break off above the overpass or down on the commuter train that was disturbing its roots.

There is more of it playing road vulture (picture Snoopy hanging over the top of the tree with his death stare, trying to look fierce.)

It looks like at least one of us will have to go out tomorrow.

We were just a moment early at church so I pulled out my little carry-around project to add a row or two, and thought at it, If I knew who you were supposed to be for I could have gotten you finished five days ago and been halfway on to whatever comes next. Oh well.

Dottie was sitting next to me. Her preferred usual spot is usually a row or two behind, but somehow not today.

She watched my hands for a bit and as the start of the meeting got pushed out a few minutes more asked me a little about it. I told her I like to always have a simple little something on hand that I don’t even have to look at, just knit by feel while my attention is on something else. My fidget spinner.

And then she said the magic words, though she had no idea: “Such a pretty color!”

And that is how the body of that hat later magically transformed from a few rows to 40, one or two away from the decreasing at the top. Bwaahahaa.

There was some unusual ingredient to be hunted down and we decided to make a mother-daughter quest of it. We found ourselves at a large grocery that had underground parking–always a nice thing for the sun impaired.

She headed up the stairs that wound around the glass elevator and I followed.

Changing altitude and direction at the same time are not my damaged brain’s strong point, not to mention with a wall moving up and down on the left, and as two people came out of the garage behind us I scrunched up to the side and told them not to wait for me.

The man did a slight nod and hurried on past.

The older African-American woman looked at me with my cane and chuckled like an old friend and, holding onto the railing on the other side to make sure she didn’t fall either, accepted the invitation, too. She moved back to the right in front of me in case someone around the corner started coming down.

I found myself figuring out how to catch her as we continued up the steep steps–not that I thought I’d have to nor that I would be much good at it.

So. We did our bit of shopping and headed for checkout. I do not do self-checkouts. I do not enable the doing away with what was once a decent middle-class job and I certainly have no problem with paying a few cents more on my groceries to take better care of their workers.

And there was our stair climber with her impeccable manicure and lovely braids.

Something, I have no way to know what, had happened.

I caught her wiping away quickly at an eye and the expression on her face and knew I had to do something as I was putting my wallet away and my purse was sitting there in front of me unzipped. To somehow be the friend I would be if we knew each other, while wishing we did. (Not that one… Oh that’s perfect.)

Have a fish! I said to her as I put a bright cheerful pink finger puppet that some knitter in Peru had made with white stripes knitted into its slightly wavy fins and tail into her hand. Tiny stitches on that one, lots of detail. Quite pretty.

Instantly her expression changed to one of disbelief and delight and she marveled at the handwork in the little thing.

Happy Birthday! I told her as we grabbed our bag of that’s-not-what-we-came-for-but-it’s-fun-stuff and headed back towards that staircase and the next store. Which had the ingredient.

It was a beautiful sunny day. Hey, I remember those!