Yup.

Meantime, I debate from time to time what kind of fruit tree to plant next; it would have to be dwarf to keep from overshadowing the panels on our roof. (Last month’s electric bill during our 100 degree heat wave, though it was nothing like everybody else’s heat wave: still. With the AC running nonstop. Four cents.)

I’d really like an avocado tree, although I hear they’re messy and drop leaves constantly, and if anyone has any experience re growing them vs squirrel and raccoon raids, I’d love to hear.

But it would certainly be funnier to join the throw the book at ‘em club, as seen on Okra.

I thumbed through the new arrival today and a few minutes later regretfully put it in the recycling bin. Pretty, pretty pictures, but nope, nope, nope. Even beside the whole issue of me and sun exposure: you can’t grow tulips here, really. It doesn’t get cold enough for them to bloom but the first season unless you’re willing to dig them up and store them in the fridge, and they’re poisonous for people if someone majorly goofs.

The squirrels, on the other hand, will thank you for hosting their party the moment you put them in the ground. Daffodils are safe from the little marauders, and my glads seem to be too, but tulip bulbs? Totally dessert.

The lilies in those pages, though–those really grabbed me. I’ve always loved Stargazers, though I think I only ever bought one bulb once years ago and it did not thrive while I was chasing after small children. Was I going to buy $50 worth of Stargazers to meet the company’s minimum? Absolutely not. Thanks for the peek, out you go.

I skipped out on Purlescence time tonight, too tired to drive, but Richard needed to make a Costco run. As long as he was at the wheel, sure, be glad to come keep you company, hon.

And so we were headed towards the produce when there they were. The lilies. After Eight,  a smaller, even more perfect version of the Stargazer variety, the flowers just as big–five stalks, 10″ pot, $14.99.

The smell was heavenly. There were two whole wooden pallets on the floor covered with blooms reaching high towards us.

We both stopped so suddenly at the sight that someone to the left turned and rammed his cart into Richard in the near-empty store. Oh sorry sir.

I was going, Wow, those are gorgeous, when Richard, to my surprise, ignoring the cart guy, pronounced, “You want one that’s not open yet. How about this one?”

Wait, what?

“Sometimes I buy you flowers,” he added in happy anticipation, waiting for it to sink in.

I looked at him. Yes of course he meant it. Cool! (He had no idea I’d been wishing or even anything at all about that catalog arriving or about how I like Stargazers, none, nada. Never been a topic.) We looked through them all till I came back to the one he’d picked out at the very beginning as indeed the best one. Like trying on shoes, isn’t it.

I had instinctively gone for the ones already in bloom because of my pink azaleas: one of which, I found out the year after I planted them, happened to actually be white. Mislabeled. Oops. Yup, it’s still there at the end of the row of them out there, its branches interwoven by now with the pink till there’s no telling where each begins: they made themselves belong to each other. They stay.

So if there’s one white lily stalk in there with the other four it will just be too funny. But behold the lilies that will be in our field of vision. I can’t wait.

The hawk usually does a low swoop, but today I saw it zoom over towards the redwood from high enough up that I almost missed it.

Last year, though I didn’t say it here because I was asked not to while I was doing it, I was helping man the remotely-controlled cameras trained on the peregrine falcon nest at City Hall in San Jose, a once in a lifetime experience. I was really dedicated to doing the job well.  Eyes glued to the screen, ready to grab and switch from camera to camera and I got really good at anticipating where they would fly next and capturing the scene for all the classrooms and birdwatchers to see. Those baby peregrines have character and they are adorable.

And there was drama: the eyas that died. The father peregrine bowing his head at his son’s body weeks later, standing still for minutes–and then to my surprise trying to push him under the gravel with the top of his head as if to give him a proper burial. Not with his sharp feet or beak but with his soft feathers.

Who knew a bird could behave so?

Neither of the parents ever stepped on his body at the corner of the nestbox. It was sacred ground.

I went to go see them in person and a fledgling hung over the edge of the ledge above as if waving a wing and grinning at the adoring paparazzi below.

But the cams took over my life, six hours some days of my hand hovered over the mouse, ready to click just so, and it left me unable to do more than the most meager amount of knitting. So many computer-induced icepacks. So many things I wanted to do with my life that got put aside. We upgraded our bandwidth to accommodate the streaming.

They asked me last week if I were going to sign in and get started again? They hadn’t heard from me…

I was quite sick, and the effort of pitching in was absolutely undoable just then. That sealed it. They’d had no way to know how much I had given up to be a part of that, incredible an experience though it was. I mentioned that the computer that had had all the sign-in information had died the death and been replaced, in case that made them feel better, because it was with great regret and a tremendous sense of freedom that I told them no–no, I didn’t think so. I did hedge and offer to do emergency backup, but that’s not what they wanted. And that was that.

This year (thank you Dad and Richard!) I have my Sibley guides. I have my birdsongs (thank you to our son Richard and Kim!) I’m learning about my own birds right here, learning their personalities and quirks, being befriended by the wrens and awed almost daily by those Cooper’s hawks. Paying attention.

How many times did I not see them because I couldn’t look up from the screen last year?

I was given a great privilege that I’m very grateful to have had, and now I have fledged and discovered my own home.

I told my aunt, who was with us, that certain species of moss nearly became extinct because people had so coveted it for the color back in the day; it grows back so slowly.

I was reminded of that today.

At the grocery store, I ran into an old friend of my husband’s, who recognized me but I didn’t him till he called out my name–I recognized his voice. Ah yes–one of the other ham radio/disaster services volunteers, how are you?  He was amazed to see me out and about and looking so well, when just a year ago, who’d have thought…

…It’s been two, actually, I told him. Hard for me to believe it too. I wanted to add, and isn’t it wonderful amazing glorious to be alive on a fine day like today!

Later, the phone rang. It was one of those calls that is the price of caring about people who happen to be mortal.

The first of my outside amaryllises sent up a bud today, my Dancing Queen, one that, going by the book, I should have tossed two years ago when it contracted red virus; it wasn’t supposed to survive anyway. But it just kept on doing what it does despite my absolute neglect during my months of being so ill, and there will be flowers again this year in a month or so.  I pulled it inside so the squirrels wouldn’t give it a taste test.

And inside the pot was a good thick covering of healthy, green moss. Thriving. I very much like it.

Later, a Bewick’s wren was bopping around at my window, its beak inches from my nose at the glass as it glanced upwards. Somehow, when I need a moment like that, it comes.

Then I picked up my needles at last, cast on, and got past the brim on the third and last pink sparkly cashmere hat: I will finish it and give it to someone who’s going to love it and then, that yarn will be gone.

And it will be time to let a new one dance in my hands.

Thank you all, meantime, for the support, and I knitted a few rows today. Decided it wasn’t worth pushing it too soon, but at the same time I was delighted that I could. Another day or two and it’ll all be back to normal.

Except…

Me: “I don’t WANT to do a liquid diet! I’m hungry and I want some real food!”

Hubby, looking at me steadily: “Nasal gastric tube.”

He had me and he knew it.  Four days that felt ever increasingly like having surgery without anesthesia. Never again.

Well, at least you can pack a lot of nourishment into soup.  So now the blockage, too, which had been ignoring my protests of I so did not earn it, is starting to improve. And Don is right: Stones into Schools, written by Mortenson himself, is the better book, but Three Cups of Tea, the one that made the man’s name and cause known, is vastly important in its own write.

Remember my dying tomato plant of a month ago? Its main branches are just straws now, bent in half from birds landing on it and going Whoa! as the stems collapsed under them–I saw them.

I discovered a new tomato on a small, still-green branch yesterday. It cheered me greatly, and all the more today.

A well-established daylily cluster can produce hundreds of blossoms to make up for how very short the life of each. This plant was just over a year old, planted when the street was redone and re-landscaped; it’s a young one.

It was shooting its one long stem stretched out far to the side and up, as if it were reaching with all its might, up towards the streetlight, which seemed to spotlight it directly. Daylily flowers typically falter and shrivel at the first hint of dusk (and this is October!), but it must have found what it needed, the streetlight must somehow have produced enough energy to light the dark away: the yellow flower was in full bloom and full color in spite of the night. It was very striking.

I got home, marveling over that, to where my husband was watching the BBC news live.  Where the third trapped miner in Chile, after 69 days underground, walked out of the rescue capsule and into the arms of his wife and the whole wide waiting world, in night lit up like the day.

We kept our car back a little bit after the first time that truck hit a bump. We didn’t want those fresh round rocks in an argument with our windshield.

This is the second year in a long while that I’ve planted my own and I’m hoping it becomes a habit.

And so I was so looking forward to that first really good, sweet, homegrown tomato on my (yes just) one little plant.  That biggest one was a goodly bright orange and getting brighter, not quite red yet; it didn’t have that intense tomato essence yet, but give it time.  I tried not to examine it too closely too many times a day.  Getting there…

And then the water that I always have set out for the critters got pulled over by one of them and emptied out and I didn’t notice immediately.  I found out when I looked out the window and discovered my so-anticipated veggie out in the yard: when I stepped out to see, hoping that maybe just maybe I could simply retrieve it (good luck with that), I found that one of the squirrels had stripped the side open, sucked it out, and left the hard outer carcass lying there in reproach.  It didn’t even eat the piece it had torn off.  It didn’t even pull it to the trees for a proper burial in hopes it would sprout more like the one squirrel had done with the whipped cream cup.

It didn’t like grocery-store-hard tomatoes.

Turkey.

Chucked that one. Okay, then. Four more to go and lots of tomato flowers.

Since then, no more fruit has set and the plant has just barely been hanging in there. I’m thinking I got a determinate variety, which sets all at once and then dies, good for someone doing canning, rather than an indeterminate, which keeps producing merrily till frost like I’d hoped for.

The plant is in a pot and I keep threatening to bring it inside out of the squirrels’ reach, but it’s pretty leggy and windy and viney, y’know?  Those four tomatoes, hanging on. It’s been a slow, cold season this year.

I noted a black squirrel rubbing its face vigorously today–I’d shaken some very hot pepper flakes around those four after the theft. Busted!

Meantime, a few days ago I thought part of the problem with losing our water supply out there is these plastic disposable cups I’ve been using (because I don’t care what happens to them) –they’re old, they’re thin, they crack easily.  I ought to put something sturdier and steadier out there.

And so I braced an old Tupperware cup in the usual spot and filled it up.

It didn’t stay put long at all!  It disappeared, and I had to go looking.

Dang, that must have been one hard tomato.  But someone kept on trucking–I found the plastic slivers.  And this time it *was* over by the tree trunks.  That squirrel kept on chewing, sure the juice and seeds must be in there somewhere: Come ON! GIVE it to me!

I don’t think Tupperware’s lifetime warranty quite covers that.

We had a tree come up near the house, oh, about ten years ago, a nice little tree. I’m an East Coast person who grew up in the woods (just enough grass at the front there to be, you know, proper, although we loved the wild violets that popped up all over and let them be in all their delightful little purpley glory).

I like all the green I can get around here.

But it became not so nice. Our patio started to buckle and we sure didn’t want it to do that to the house, too. I read up on it and it was apparently an ailanthus, an alien species that doesn’t support the local wildlife and a fast grower because it hogs all the water–and its roots reaching under the shed to the other side looked like they were tangling with the neighbor’s tall and much-loved redwood that overlaps onto our property.

I pointed that out to the neighbors and promised them.  The young tree had to go.

I waited for nesting season to be over, just in case, although I’d never seen the birds or squirrels stay in it for long.  Too open. Too vulnerable.  They clearly preferred other types.  Curious.

The guy I called for a quote came last week with his little boy in tow, an absolutely adorable preschooler who shyly shook my hand too like his daddy, who was beaming proudly, as well he should.

After they left, I went through my stash: years of knitting lace and fingering weights for book material (did you SEE last week when the cheapest new copy of Wrapped was listed at $96.07?!) meant there was nothing really there in the way of little boys and hat material. Purlescence was having a big sale Saturday, though, and surely I could find something good.

Right. Finding good yarn at Purlescence. Difficult, I know.

And so that Jo Sharp merino/silk/cashmere went home with me and a very soft hat got made for an unbelievably small amount of money. Two balls five bucks. It took me just one.

Guess who came along with his daddy for a few moments this morning on his way to preschool? Did I mention he’d already melted my heart? And how much he looks like David, my sort-of-other-son from way back when?  (The oldest child of the Tara’s Redwood Burl Shawl story.)  But then the little boy’s face lit up and he waved hi at me with a smile when he saw me, not quite so shy this time–and I went right back inside and got his hat.

Chris, if he should ever lose that and be heartbroken, you let me know and on a day’s notice for the knitting, I’ll sneak you a spare. (I know, it doesn’t work with baby blankets either, the kids can always tell. But if he’ll let me, I’ve got the yarn, I can knit him another.)

And if you live in the Bay Area of northern California and you want a good tree service, I thoroughly recommend Chris’s.

Oh, and? The barbecue grill got moved over a bit during all the goings-on. Later, I got to see a gray squirrel give it a quick glance from a planter, take a flying leap, and… miss! It landed on its feet but I think it stubbed its nose, poor thing.  Then it got up on the lower bar and posed a moment in triumph, as if to declare, Tadaah!  I *meant* to do that.

And here I’d been just waiting for one of them to leap for the missing tree.

Meantime, in the silly-stuff department, as it’s been growing I’ve been doodling a bit with my double-stemmed avocado treelet, the one with the darker leaves.  Any good spinner knows the point of plying a yarn is to add strength and balance, and I wanted to keep those stems growing together rather than splitting apart.  They intrigue me. I’ve never had a plant come up twins before.

When I first started bending them gently around each other, they would untwist themselves and come back apart by the end of the day, but now, a little more height, a little more dancing to the Twist.

The larger-leaved sprout is a few weeks older but is still sitting in water and the color difference is actually more pronounced in real life–I’m assuming it’s because the young’uns are happily digging in the dirt.

Both pits came from the same bag of Hass fruit. The Hass itself, the most widely grown avocado in the world now, was from a sprouted seed allowed to grow into a tree that was nearly cut down because it wasn’t taking grafts from the Fuerte variety (good thing!) The children of the man who sprouted it got him to relent, Rudolph Hass’s tree was left standing, and the rest became history.

Right, right. So there you go.

And while we’re talking about glorious deep rosy reds like that–a return doorbelling, plum jam, a surprised plum-tree-owning neighbor, a protest of “But you didn’t have to do that!”, a response of “But may I?” (And I explained that Michelle had wanted to learn how to make jam, so it was from both of us.)

And then I got invited out to their garden.  Squashes were picked and I was gifted right back again.

My kind of neighbor wars.

Oh, and–they showed me a large leaf, quite shredded; insects, I thought, and a bad case at that. Birds, they corrected me: they’d liked it for their nests. (They clearly thought that was pretty cool, actually.)

So THAT’S where they…! So we talked birds a moment, and when I described my Nuttall’s, they smiled, oh yes, they knew that one. It has really taken to my suet feeder–that’s today’s picture, and I’m hoping it’ll let me get closer and closer.

Meantime, my black squirrel climbed a tree and stared at my being somehow on the wrong side of the fence.  What are you doing over there?!

Speaking of squirrels–my tomato container got dug into, bad, and trying to figure out how to keep the bushy-taileds out, I hit upon this: I took the lid of a plastic spinach box, cut out to the center and wider there for the stem and pushed it down into the pot. Voila! Mulched, sort of, and squirrel free. (Picture taken after the digging and before the sweeping up the mess.)

One of the things about the pot is I can haul it inside when I’m not around to give those squirrels The Look. It is the funniest thing to see one of them stop dead in their tracks and even sometimes turn tail.  You don’t mess with the momma here. You can have sunflower gleanings, but the tomatoes, those are mine.

I’d share them with the neighbors when they ripen but they’ve got their own ahead of me.