I think the scrub jay chased the rabbit across the yard just because it could boss it around like that so it was fun. It’s a corvid thing.

Re less fun things: sometimes it’s just easier to hire someone else to do it. And so two men showed up today to spray my peach trees against leaf curl disease and another crew from the same company will be pruning everything shortly.

I noted one of them stopping first in apparent surprise and not moving from the spot, so I opened the door and called over to him, Yes–that’s a mango tree.

He told me, marveling, that the other guy had instantly recognized that it was. He looked like he was trying to memorize it–the long leaves, the tropically curving branches.

I answered the question he hadn’t quite asked yet by saying it had been under a plastic greenhouse when it was younger. What I didn’t say was, we’ve had the warmest winter since it was planted and I haven’t so much as had to cover it at night with frost covers but half a dozen times this whole season.

Including, as it would later turn out, tonight, just to be on the safe side.

After they left one of the rabbits tried to dig under the bird netting around the base protecting the mango from their teeth–they’ve always avoided it before–and the jay would have been proud of my wing flapping as I ran out there to chase the little fuzzbutt back across the yard.