“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”
Friday April 12th 2019, 10:33 pm
Filed under: Friends,Mango tree,Wildlife

I sent Dani (the original instigator of the planting of my mango) a new picture of the tree and he sent me this article.

Who knew that Alphonso mangoes were helping to keep the last wild group of Asian lions in the world alive?



Can I hear you now?
Thursday April 11th 2019, 10:50 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family,Garden

A few more days and the whole cherry tree should look like this and more.

For my dad: an Apple Blossom amaryllis started opening today.

The Frost peach has been properly thinned, and so has hours of paperwork and housework that had needed to be out of the way before company comes next week.  Sometimes even the disorganized have to crack down and get to it.

The reward is that I found the bluetooth pendant for connecting my cellphone to my hearing aids–it had fallen behind the computer.



The apples are finally waking up
Wednesday April 10th 2019, 9:59 pm
Filed under: Garden

More spring pictures.

The Fuji apple started blooming two days after the Yellow Transparent, as it does every year.

The brand new Frost peach tree I planted last month? I need to thin that pair to a single peach. (I know–already!) Always leave the bigger one.



Taxes
Tuesday April 09th 2019, 10:46 pm
Filed under: Life

Never mind, delete that, the resident computer scientist just told me how to find what I needed in spite of a certain well-known tax program’s user interface goof. Alright, then, let me finish that up.

Oh, and–if you’re in California, property taxes are due Wednesday, not the 15th. You only have to be tripped up by that once (early on) not to ever do it again.



Well that worked
Monday April 08th 2019, 10:54 pm
Filed under: Family,Mango tree

I left the Sunbubble zipped and the Christmas lights and heater on while we flew to see my folks; Richard’s Rube Goldberged auto temp set-up on the lights no longer works, so those would just stay on, but the heater’s would turn it off above 74. I knew the humidity would rise a lot with nobody around to open the greenhouse door by day and I had no idea how hot it would actually get in there. But tropical trees don’t argue with heat, is all I could figure.

When we left it that way for five days over Thanksgiving we came home to black spots on the leaves and a graying and withering away of all new growth, taking away all chance of fruiting from what would have been. Alphonso mangoes do not like humidity. The fruits from last summer held on, though.

It’s warmer now than it was then and boy has it rained (with the irony of, not inside the plastic. I’ve had to water this one tree.)

I didn’t want another disease attack, now that I know my resistant variety is actually somewhat susceptible, but you do what you have to do, and besides, visiting my Dad was vastly more important.

All this in ten days. This is what the new growth looked like as of yesterday that had been just starting in several spots, like the first photo. All those small lower clusters of leaves did not exist yet when we left. New branches on a mango in flush can grow several inches a day, with the leaves reddish as they grow, then light green, then gradually dark and lush, and I knew that, but still, wow.

Heat and increasing sunlight with the season and plain good luck. And suddenly I have a much bigger tree.

As soon as these bud out and start fruiting, those uprights will start curving gracefully downward with the weight. And what would have fruited in November suddenly doesn’t matter.

We ate our first just-for-the-two-of-us mango yesterday, the third from the tree. It was like nothing I could describe and do it justice, but it was very very very good.

There is one last summer 2018 mango turning slowly yellow as this year makes its promises.



Italian for star
Sunday April 07th 2019, 9:48 pm
Filed under: Garden

An afternoon at 74F and the Stella cherry started to quietly celebrate at the back of the tree.

I’m not putting any sweaters away yet, but I’m looking forward to what that one’s going to look like in a few days.



Reds and greens
Saturday April 06th 2019, 9:26 pm
Filed under: Family,Garden,Knitting a Gift,Wildlife

We’re having a Cooper’s hawk sighting nearly every day now. Cool.

Another Red Lion amaryllis from my dad–here, the hawk’s gone now, let me give you a close-up. Love love love these. If you have an amaryllis with four or more leaves it should bloom the next year, too.

The ground is so wet that digging a big deep hole and finally planting the Kishu mandarin I got for Christmas was surprisingly very easy. Like pushing a shovel into Play-dough.

If you live in non-citrus-growing areas and wish for a mandarin orange, plant this one in a pot to keep in or out depending on the weather. The tree is small and the fruit is golf ball sized, soft, seedless, and the peel pretty much falls off and you can just pop the whole thing in your mouth just like that. The fruit doesn’t ship well for grocery stores, you have to grow your own.

It ripens months before my Gold Nugget and thus stretches out the season for us. Not to mention it will create more ground-bird nesting habitat out of what was a bare spot.

Today was a perfect spring day and the Sungold cherry tomato that I planted in 2017 burst into even more blooms. Three years!

Note that it was originally set up inside the largest tomato cage I could buy but by now it’s simply carrying it up and away on its shoulders to wherever and there’s no disentangling the thing, all you can do is admire its Leaning Tower of Pisa impression from inside that happy thicket. (Those few dead leaves are from where the freezes got to the outer edges of the plant but it’s made up for it since.)

And to repeat the Red Lion red theme, while listening to two two-hour sessions of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I got ten repeats done on this cowl; I can get one last one out of this skein and then that’s it.

There will be two more sessions tomorrow, so it is time to pick the next project. Baby girl afghan is what I want to do, but I don’t think I have quite the yarn I want for it yet.



An Anna’s
Friday April 05th 2019, 8:24 pm
Filed under: Wildlife

I was being watched. It took me a moment.

It was holding quite still, perched on my Babcock peach tree, which does not get enough sun and so is not very big but has a few lingering flowers still.

Now that it had my attention it belted out one loud chirp, waited a beat as if to consider the thought, then, a second.

How did that tiny thing make that huge sound? How on earth did I of all people hear–it really was, (as it took off), it was a hummingbird.

It had apparently decided I was harmless so it went around me to taste a flower on the Indian Free peach, probably creating new fruit for me right before my eyes.

Then it landed on the nearest branch and went back to looking curiously at me from within arm’s reach.

Where it stayed until at last I raised the phone in my hands, set on camera, hoping.

Nopenopenope ‘bye!



Can’t wait to meet her
Thursday April 04th 2019, 10:02 pm
Filed under: Family

There is this other news happening, too.



So proud
Wednesday April 03rd 2019, 9:47 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

Dad’s on a lot of oxygen–the machine’s at eight, for those who know how to count such things–but even so, his blood levels sink really low when he gets up and walks around, so while Mom, my husband, and my older siblings (who visited mostly one at a time, other than Sunday night’s pizza dinner) chatted, I found myself going and sitting in front of the TV in the other room with Dad, whose hearing makes it hard for him to follow the conversation in even a small crowd and who needs that chair where he can put his feet up high.

I’ve had my blood oxygen at 70%, setting off the alarm repeatedly in the hospital for a temporary problem. I don’t know how he does it. I am in awe of his perseverance.

The Smithsonian Channel was on a lot, nice and loud for the both of us, and as I quietly knitted I learned a lot of stuff I never knew before about the Egyptian pyramids. Which was pretty cool. Limestone increases in strength with compression but if you tap at it and cut it just exactly so, it slices pretty much straight down. Who knew?

I went through three and a half skeins in those four days.

Dad reached for my hands with a light in his eyes: he had something he wanted to tell me.

“I wanted someone who was intellectual and spiritual,” he said. “I picked your mother for you kids.” He wanted me to know how proud he was of her and how proud he was of us. Of me. Of each one of my kids. He wanted to tell me this and he wanted to say it now, not for the first time, but it was important to him to give voice to all his heart right now.

Mom chose the best, too, Dad. Both of you did, and we thank you for it and we are proud of who you are and grateful for who you helped us to be. We love you.



How often
Tuesday April 02nd 2019, 10:47 pm
Filed under: Life

It snowed before we landed Friday and just after snapping this photo in front of my folks’ place I gave my boots their inaugural snow print.

But this also happened on the trip: I do airports in wheelchairs because of the intensity of the visual environment and how it affects my balance. Like flicking water on burning-hot oil.

The wheelchair pusher in Salt Lake took us all the way to the car rental and then the car itself.

But while Richard was checking in on our reservation there, the guy had me off to the side slightly, such that nobody going past would connect me in that busy place with that really tall guy just over there.

Two large, tall, white men came toward us. Neither looked, shall we say, approachable. The further one didn’t notice that the nearer one stopped, and he kept going.

The nearer one looked me in the eye with something bordering on contempt. I had never seen him in my life. It made no sense to me.

But then. He looked at the tall young African-American man at the handlebars and his face went full-on seething hatred and he stared to make sure that that guy saw it. He wanted him cowering. He wanted him afraid. He wanted, had they been alone, to do him harm.

And then he swaggered on his way.

I glanced back, waiting for the bully to board the elevator behind us because I didn’t want this perfectly lovely man I’d spent these last few minutes with to be hit with any repercussions from what I was about to say. But saying it was imperative. “I’m so sorry you had to deal with that face.”

He pretended not to know what I was talking about.

“I saw that guy. I am so sorry. You shouldn’t have had that happen to you.”

At that he melted in relief that there was still kindness in the world. That he mattered. That someone, some white person who didn’t have to live through it, saw him in that horrific moment.



The little old lady on the plane
Monday April 01st 2019, 11:10 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Knitting a Gift,Life

So much to say, but let me start tonight with the knitting. I’m too tired to stay up and edit this so it’s straight stream of consciousness but I feel like I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I don’t write this down.

I took four balls of Malabrigo with me: one Rios worsted weight, three heavier in Mecha, and picked the slightly orange red with black specks one for the trip there.

Our flight was very delayed, so much so that I cast off just before the plane took off on the runway. So that was done.

I got another hat knitted while sitting quietly with my dad.

The third one got a goodly way along the same way, but then it was time to go.

We got on our plane after sunset tonight, and the flight attendant put a notice on the seat next to us that nobody else was to sit there. What was that about?

Soon an elderly, tiny woman from I’d guess Central America was escorted to that open window seat next to me on the first row, where she didn’t have to walk far.

I had that third Mecha hat in my hands and she sat and quietly watched my hands like a hawk for a long time, but at last adjusted the small pillow she’d brought on and tried to rest.

She missed the attendant offering pretzels, then something to drink; I saved my pretzels for her and tried to get their attention when she woke up.

She went back to watching my hands. The show had changed now: I was into the decreases at the top of the hat. I finished it and turned it so she could see the seven-point star it made at the top.

“It’s beautiful!”

(I may be deaf on a plane but I sure got that one.)

It was bright royal blue–and I had knitted it sitting by my daddy. But that red!

The seatbelt sign was off and I got up and reached into my purse in the overhead and it was right there at the top waiting to be grabbed, a little to my surprise. I sat back down and showed it to her under the light to get the best view of the colors and her whole body exclaimed with the word, “Oooooooh!!!!”

And just like that it was hers.

She was stunned. “For ME?!” She reached for my hands, looking into my eyes and my smile: yes I meant it.

She could have danced. Her eyes certainly did. She reached up to feel it, and when I said it was wool she said, “Wool?” just to make sure she’d gotten it right. She motioned to it and her blouse to show how very very well they matched. She was so happy!

The flight attendant interrupted her with some water; I grabbed the last ball I’d packed, Rios in Ravelry Red, and cast on a lace cowl.

The hats had been stockinette. This was something new. She watched my hands avidly again, right up until the city lights below started getting closer.

I talked to her daughter later as we waited for our luggage, her teenage son with them. They’d been uncertain about having Grandma sitting alone away from them but that’s what there was at that point in boarding.

Turns out her mother told her afterwards that for awhile there she’d had a hard time breathing.

That would have been when she leaned against her pillow and closed her eyes and hoped hard to be okay.

And then I gave her that hat.

That little old lady being wheeled away in a chair owning her second hat now was definitely happily okay now. I don’t even know her name but we are best friends for life.