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Dwarf grapefruit tree. We’ve been waiting four years for this thing to bear fruit. Maybe this time?

The bonnet side view, since you asked:

The light wasn’t great, so the ribbon looks washed out; it’s such a pretty blue with wheat stalks on it. The hatmaker said he has a special fondness for any ribbon depicting wheat or rye.

That batwing plait around the edges is to swoon for, isn’t it?

We found out about the steampunk/Victoriana con by chance: a Facebook friend mentioned it Saturday morning. So quick on the uptake am I that I at first interpreted “in SD” to mean in South Dakota and had a moment of “aw, too bad, I would love to go to something like that.” Then it dawned on me that my friend who lives in San Diego was probably posting about an event in, go figure, San Diego.

I mentioned it to Scott and he agreed that it sounded like a perfect mother-daughter Mother’s Day adventure. He stayed home with the little ones, which was part of my present. We arrived too late to sign up for the Mother’s Day Ice Cream Social, but as it happened, after we tore ourselves away from the tempting vendor hall and were headed toward the bits-and-bobs room, we encountered a Victorian gentleman bearing a box of slightly melty ice-cream bars: leftovers from the social which he was quite desperate to unload on sweet-toothed passersby. This made Rose and Beanie very happy.

The high point for Jane was meeting Kaja Foglio, co-author and illustrator of the Genius Girl comics (which have won numerous awards and look wonderful)—and discovering that her son was the model for a character in Aaron Williams’s PS238 series, which all my girls adore. Scott was Aaron’s editor on North 40. I love it when our worlds converge this way.