Coopernicus swooped in around lunchtime, perched on the lawn mower handle and communed with me a few minutes and allowed me to admire him up close.

Right when I needed it in my day and right on cue. Time to put down the stupid health insurance company why-are-they-charging-us-out-of-network and just go be one with nature for a moment.

Needed that…

Four o’clock good?

Yes, sure, c’mon by.

And so, curious, I weighed today’s two bags of persimmons. Forty-five pounds? I’d guessed I’d picked and given away about a hundred pounds so far but it looks like it must have been double that.

A crow somewhere unseen was scolding me for that taking as I worked, and I threw a few that had been chowed down on already in an outside bin–and so it begins. The fewer the fruit left, the less danger by mobbing gangs of ravens and their smaller cousins to my hawks later, but man, there was a lot of fruit left. I extended the pole the full twelve feet for the first time (though that does make it harder to avoid snagging leaves) and could have filled many more bags, but it was time to go get Richard.

Still. That’s a whole lot of fruit that won’t rot in their yard, that the crows won’t squawk over, and that will and is being eaten by people.

And that doctor who told me to work on my upper body strength? I am so on it.