All anew

The first peregrine falcon egg has arrived on PG&E’s 33d floor in San Francisco, a full week earlier than last year, which was earlier than any year before it, as was the year before that, to the point of being a month earlier than it once was. Eyes on our San Jose nest, often just a few days behind.

Meantime, the neighbors did some tree trimming, and with our permission they cut back some random stuff that was leaning over from our side of the fence. The trimmers did leave one big bushy thing alone: it had a bird’s nest at the top, and it may be February but it’s nesting season now.

I’m pretty sure that’s the jays’ nest. And there have been two, and in the last week they’ve been cooperating like a pair rather than chasing each other off from the peanut offerings tossed when the squirrels aren’t looking.

Two Bewick’s wrens likewise have begun dancing lightly together across the top of the large wooden box that gives me such a good viewing platform as I scatter suet across it. The kind with chili oil in it: birds only. (And don’t rub your eyes!) I haven’t seen one wren feed the other yet, but it will be soon.

There is new light and space opened up for our fruit trees now, thank you, neighbors.

And Phyllis, I know you said it takes several years, I know it takes several years, but no one told the Tropic Snow peach that it takes several years: definitely pink there (flash notwithstanding) and definitely a flower about to open up. Probably several. When it starts to fruit I want to put a metal cage around each one, prop them up somehow and let that baby tree do what it wants to do.

They say that letting it fruit in the first year or two will stunt the growth, which I’m choosing to think of as not the roots but rather the future height of the tree. (Right?) And this is a problem?

Maybe just one peach?