More gopher holes yesterday. A lot more, same area but further out from the pear tree, none of them very big of an opening.

Alright then: I found the Costco bottle of cinnamon sticks and stuck one into the opening to each hole (should have thought of that sooner.) Each almost entirely filled the space. Then where the edge of the house comes closest to the fence I drew a line of ground cinnamon straight across to make a scent fence. The little underground beavers have to come up to sniff the air sometime.

Today I found that no stick had been touched. There were just a couple new holes, placed as if the gopher had been trying to avoid what I’d done. I stuck cinnamon sticks in them, too, again half in the ground, half out, little flags all around marking my territory. It was welcome to go right back where it came from–out of here!

Meantime, my plum tree, my Santa Rosa plum my kids planted me as a surprise Mother’s Day gift about eight years ago–the last two years it looked increasingly unwell and I thought for sure last summer we were losing it. Of what I don’t know and I could only Google, but when I described it to a friend who has the same variety she said her tree was like that now, too.

I treated it like a peach, giving it an organic-label-friendly dormant copper-spray treatment a month ago, at least on the main part of the trunk and some of the branches before I ran out, trying to do something.

Yesterday it showed only gray trunk and limbs and I was still wondering if that’s all it would ever be again.

Today it had small bursts of green everywhere, some single, some in clusters. All. Over. It felt very, very good.

And I have more cinnamon sticks for this end of the yard, too, if I need them.