The Baby Crawford peach tree at nine months.

Saw the translucent outline of what was clearly the hawk on top of the awning, and as I watched his beak announcing he owned the place I thought, show me your beautiful self, c’mon.

A minute or two later he did a little swoop down right in front of the bird feeder and back up to the other side, a six foot leap for a thirty-one-inch bird but just enough for me to laugh in delight at his doing what I’d hoped for. As if I could tell him what to do. Right.

I watched a gray squirrel walking slowly across the near edge of my neighbor’s roof, turn to look our direction and suddenly race screaming away at the speed of life.

Listen, if the hawk were hunting it would have grabbed that cocky black squirrel on the fence that’s been trying to stare it down. Leap away into the orange tree? Nah, why bother.

The gray ones always seem to have more sense.

The Cooper’s headed off at last in the opposite direction, flying low and giving me a better view this time.

Meantime, a picture for Dani: my Alphonso mango, now 22 months old.

That single limb just to the left of the stake? (To which the tree is attached by pieces of old ace bandages, it outgrew the ties it came with awhile ago.) When I prune the new tip growth in the spring it’s going to grow a new limb for each one of those leaves, more or less. It will look like that cluster on the upper right and balance things out a bit.

The whole tree moved like a hula skirt in a Hawaiian dance with the wind that this storm came in on.

I’ll keep that stake there awhile yet. It does no harm.