Songs from the Big Square

Well, flummoxed reader, I guarantee that when you've finished reading this weeks' exciting instalment, you'll wonder why I chose this title. So let me apologize up front: the idea of a square is loosely associated with this weeks' post, and I'd previously talked about Palo Alto being a big square, so the opportunity seemed too good to miss. So, having thoroughly deconstructed the art, let's get down to it.

It's summer! That means, kids hanging out in the street (the schools here appear to finish in early June, if they were actually doing anything), ever warmer weather, and a different view of the local produce. A lot of the South Bay used to be orchards, and we're still spoiled with fruit trees. This week the contents of the plum tree in our back garden suddenly ripened, going from barely ripe to this:

Now to those squares. There's still not much to report about the lockdown itself, so Helen's latest project has been an 12-day online knitting thing to make a small blanket with a seaside theme; 9 squares, joining up into a bigger square. Or to put it all in pictures:

Apparently the tricky bit here is sewing it all together. And top tip for you, when you do that, make sure all the squares are the right way up. I don't want to suggest that maybe we didn't do that; I'm just putting it out there...

Hey, and we went to a shop! OK, so we didn't go in, but the local Lush shop has opened for kerbside pickup, and as we were out on foot, we did a pedestrian kerbside pickup. Having not shopped except for food since February, this is a pretty big deal.

Right, let's pick those plums!