Nothing like some good sourdough out of the oven. (Another pumpkin cranberry cinnamon loaf.)

The last two days we had a normal, San Francisco Bay-style marine layer that cooled things down and helped the firefighters and cleared the air a great deal–and the critters got at a few of the ripening figs despite my best efforts.

Today, as containment continues, the smoke was back, the air was gray, and the figs got left alone. They are browning up rapidly now, winding up the season.

So I guess my observation that fire air keeps the critters away seems to hold. I have high hopes for ripe ones for breakfast picked at their morning sweetest.

I was going to go to Andy’s to get some late season peaches, too, while they last, but my tire picked up a nail.

Fortunately easily dealt with–I lucked out, the idiot light came on on the freeway after I hit a rough patch with debris and I could have been stranded there but I was able to get it to my mechanic with no problem.

But it was not what I’d planned. You do not drive out of Silicon Valley on a Friday after 2:30 if you don’t have to. Not even during a pandemic.

Not a single apple on the ground for days. Nothing pecked.

Not a single fig taken before its time–and up till this point, my success rate at getting to pick and eat a fully ripe one has been a total of exactly one single one. If I leave them that one last day for perfecting, they’re gone.

Remember these past years where I’ve put a fake dead crow out at night (so they don’t see me and don’t think I killed it) to keep the real ones from wanting to come in my yard? I was never sure that really worked, but I didn’t do that this year and this is the first year I can remember where I’ve had flocks of crows fly over my house. Morning or evening: every single time I go outside. It’s like they know I know where the fruit is so they’re checking it out–and it could well be, given that crows evolved scavenging the edges of human civilization and cast offs, so much so that they can read human faces and expressions as well as a dog can.

The trees they liked to be just far enough away in next door are gone now, and maybe that’s part of it, but they didn’t start coming directly overhead and in waves until things started to ripen.

The ability of–something–to tear through and rearrange the bird netting has been impressive, and the breaking of young fig branches in the process, disconcerting.

Not a single crow around since the fires started. It seems they don’t want to be high overhead in all that smoke. One single squirrel briefly came in view, for that matter, and it did not want to run fast nor exert itself but I still told it it had to leave. It did.

Rather than coming fleeing down out of the hills in numbers, at least this far out the wildlife seems simply to have vanished.

Not a single apple.

Not a single fig, not even the ripening one right there clearly in easy reach where the netting doesn’t go that far. Anything could have swiped it. Nothing did.

I’ll take it.

Photo by, as far as I can tell, Iris Brewster, because she credits the photographers in her other pictures. It does embiggen if you want to see better.

Mom? I still don’t like brussel sprouts. I’m sorry. I’ve tried, I know you’ve tried, I’ve olive-oiled and roasted and reminded myself they’re healthy and all that, but they still are what they are.  It helps that I’m married to someone who doesn’t like them even more than I don’t like them. Except at least they’re better at your house because you’re a far better cook.

But some came in our weekly produce bag last Saturday. I put them off for most of the week, which surely didn’t improve their flavor any, but there is no room in our fridge for more than one gigantic Milk Pail box’s worth so I finally roasted them last night and they stank up the house so bad it still lingered in the morning. I even ate one. Richard hoped I wouldn’t ask him to. The rest are in the fridge, all ready for us to magically change our minds and be thrilled and devour them after a bit of a zap.

But this is why my conscience could not simply throw them out without trying and at least tasting them. That’s the sun up there and a fire behind that ridge. Click to really see.

And yet still they feed us. 

Seventy-seven thousand people including all of UC Santa Cruz have been evacuated along the coast, where the nightly fog that’s supposed to keep the forest floor and the roots of the redwoods damp has gone missing, and who knows how many more folks inland had time to pack before they had to get out of there. The unheard-of August lightning storms? There are more in the forecast.

Yesterday it was smokey at Andy’s Orchard but it wasn’t terrible. Today the high school across the street from him had become the evacuation center and the area was marked Evacuation Warning: be packed, be ready.

I am so glad I went when I did.

The phone rang this morning, but the person was breaking up so badly that neither one of us could make heads nor tails. So they just came. The doorbell rang a few hours later: it was the mattress people. It was not Saturday.

I had told them that if the fires got worse we’d be happy to wait because their safety was the most important thing, to please check first. They appreciated that–and instead decided, okay, we need to get this done NOW. I wondered if they’d been driving since before dawn.

They put the new cover on the new mattress. We were supposed to have to do that part per the seller and watching them, I’m not sure we could have.

They got everything set up. I followed them outside to say where I wanted the old one to go till we could hire someone to come pick it up.

They knew that we had just missed the city’s semi-annual cleanup date when it would have been done for free.

They used the lift to get the old one onto the truck. No worries, they said, we’ll take care of it.

I was not expecting that at all.

When I told the one guy I’d bought the peaches at a farm yesterday, and how things were there today, his eyes got wide and he really, really appreciated it (and probably was really really glad they hadn’t waited till tomorrow) and headed outside to the truck to share with his co-worker. They waved thanks, I waved thanks, and they were out of here while the routes back out were still safe.

Last year the last of Andy’s peaches were done at the end of August,  earlier than previous years, and after eating a generic one that had come with my weekly produce bag and what a disappointment it was compared to what Andy grows, I wanted to go.

The air here had improved, but the fire map showed one blaze southeast of Morgan Hill as well as the ones on the coast.

I called.

“Yes, we’re open. It’s smokey, though.”

Coming through San Jose it started to sting the eyes even in the car and by the time I turned off the freeway, there was a plume behind the mountains on the coastal side. Eastward nearer Andy’s it was gray but without anything specific.

All I could do was say a silent prayer for all those in it, all those who don’t want to find themselves in it, and all those fighting those fires for the rest of us.

I got two flats of CalReds and some cherry-sized, exquisitely flavored green gage plums, and the similar mirabelle plums out of curiosity. Heirloom tomatoes. A bottle of poison oak honey (the very best). Slab dried apricots, not the prettiest but the ones that had been at peak ripeness so they went smush when pitted. Fresh-picked cobs of corn from his neighbor.

I was basically trying to pack all the Andy’s-ing I could into one trip because I felt I could take nothing for granted.

And then the fun part is I got home and emailed the friend who always wants a case of peaches whenever I go there and told her she had first crack at that second one.

Last time I’d gone they hadn’t had a second case that wasn’t already spoken for so I hadn’t been able to offer.

She was surprised I’d gone out in this, ecstatic for the peaches, and her husband picked them up almost immediately. They won’t end up pureed in my freezer for the winter but that’s okay, there’s still more August and I’ll just have to go back next week.

A restless night of not much sleep, not registering that there was a big storm going on out there, and I gave up and got up at a time when it just happened to be quiet out there.

I was washing my hands standing under the skylight when a flash of light startled me into glancing towards the light switch, not fathoming, just as the BOOM!!! hit and the power went out.

Found out later that one of the many lightning strikes had hit a few blocks over.

Thunderstorms?! In the Bay Area? In August? Rain? In AUGUST? A hundredth of an inch, as it turned out, but hey, that’s enough to sprout the fall weed seeds.

More and more house-rattling. I had been planning to go pick the one fig that should have been ripe first thing this morning. There was no going out there.

And then it seemed to settle down and all the booms stopped.

I really wanted that fig. I thought maybe I might chance it.

It wasn’t really raining (oh! Well, not enough for me to have heard from inside), just the slightest sprinkle.

For all that the fig, it turned out, had not finished ripening in the night and I left it there to be stolen later by the squirrels (which it was.)

Ten steps back to the door, I was halfway there, when out of the gray-not-blue, another BOOM! skittered me inside so fast! I could just picture the obituary: Lost Grandma because she just couldn’t bear to give up that one single piece of fruit to the rodents, but it was not the fig that got roasted.

They say we may have a repeat tonight of either yesterday’s PG&E shutdown or another weird storm and a third power outage, so dinner was the fastest thing I could cook so we wouldn’t be stuck with half-raw chicken and a fridge we couldn’t open.

Edited to add: I’m guessing that one of the biggest fire tornados ever may have helped create the atmospheric conditions that led to that storm.

Been too long.

You never know when someone else’s diet might change or something, so to be on the safe side I called before showing up.

I hadn’t seen Nina since before the pandemic started.

I put the ziplocked loaf of cranberry pumpkin sourdough down on her doorstep (that one recipe is totally worth the price of the book) rang the bell, and stepped back.

Our masks in place and with the sun low for the day’s heat blast to calm down some we continued the conversation outside that had begun on the phone. Life. Kids. Grandkids. Work.

There was such an intensity of joy in something so ordinary.

They made French toast with some of that bread after I left and I got exclamation marks!!! texted to me. Now she knew why I liked that recipe so much!

Any time, hon, any time.

With a superfluous pomegranate picture just because I thought it was pretty.

I was ordering some pre-tempered powdered cocoa butter for chocolate making, as one does to help seed the right type of crystal formation, while wondering how summertime temps in transit might effect what I was buying it for… Well I guessed I’d find out.

The baking supplier dangled a half pound of hazelnut praline on my screen, and it wasn’t going to cost me any extra on the shipping so hey why not.

When it came it said 50% hazelnuts and it was sweeter than I would have made it. Y’know, all I had to do was throw toasted no-skins-on hazelnuts in the food processor and an equal amount of sugar (or less, for us) and then I wouldn’t have had to work all the oils back through the heavy substance of the stuff. Done. Gotta admit that is tasty, though. Into the fridge with you.

So here I was a few days later and there was this batch of homemade chocolate, quite dark. We’d just eaten a small lunch that definitely needed more to it.

I wondered…

So I nuked a little of that chocolate for 20, 30 seconds or so so it wouldn’t burn, just enough so that when I smashed it with a spoon it gave way and became stirrable.

And then stirred in a larger spoonful of that hazelnut praline.

And then folded a large number of raspberries in.

I got asked if I could go do that again? Please?

We didn’t quite eat the entire twelve ounces of raspberries but we came close.

Sterling asked how I was and I didn’t really answer because I was still trying to figure it out. The nausea and dizziness are thankfully gone. Tomorrow’s another day further away from the concussion, and the day after that and the day after that and I figure this’ll all be temporary just like the other times.

Meantime, Milk Pail offered flats of peaches, ran out, restocked, relisted them for this Saturday morning’s pickup and I grabbed one. I’d passed on it earlier because I was going to drive to Andy’s and there was no way Milk Pail’s could ever live up to his. Plus I was hoping Andy might have a few last Anya apricots left.

That drive to Morgan Hill is not happening no matter how much I want it to. Richard will be doing the local pickup.

My head still just wants to hold still. Walking around the yard, I have to watch my feet constantly because they don’t entirely know how far away the ground is with each step.

Which isn’t really new, it’s just my brain doing Groundhog Day and back at the starting point.

When I was a kid my dad met a guy who owned a truck. And who had connections to Florida’s citrus groves. Who said that the Page mandarin orange was the best tasting one in existence but nobody ever hears of them outside Florida so you couldn’t get them in Maryland so he would drive down there every winter to bring some back.

Which is how my Dad, working on a fundraiser, found himself commissioning a truckload of those Page oranges to be dropped off in our carport to sell, and the trucker got his, too. People would sign up for so many cases, Dad would place the order, and everybody knew what the delivery day was in case the weather threatened to freeze them–there was no way all those were going inside the house. Come and get’em.

But then one year there was a big freeze in Florida and for reasons of geography or biology I don’t know, but the Pages, which as I remember were mostly growing alongside one river, pretty much all died.

They were not replanted. That variety was particularly hard to grow; why not put in something that was easier, more prolific, and probably a bit hardier so that the farmers wouldn’t have to go through a complete loss again. And Pages are small. The market rules, and families have to be fed.

I read an interview with the owner of a citrus tree grower here a few years back, answering questions about his company and the varieties he sells.

What caught my eye was his saying, And to fill out your collection, I’d get the Page–it’s my favorite.

Why to fill out…why not just get it first?

And so I did.

Where I planted it that summer six years ago turned to be a terrible spot sun-wise in the winter–the fences were just wrong. I was advised to dig it up and put it in a pot to contain the roots to let the top recover, and did so.

The next year I planted a Gold Nugget mandarin, the only variety that doesn’t need heat to get sweet and that can go down to 26F. It went in the ground (avoiding that bad corner) and is nearly to the top of the fence.

The Page, by comparison, grows very little. I don’t think its twice its original height yet. It buds out a bit in the spring and then they all fall off and die, every year. The best I got was a green dot before it let go.

Its rootstock is the one that shot out those fast spiky barbs that I cut off that are now successfully protecting branches of my peaches from birds and critters. That part wants to grow!

There’s a reason those trees are rare.

But for all this time I’ve just kept on watering it, even though I’ve long since given up on getting anything out of it. A little citrus food. Doesn’t care. Stays mottled. Oh well.

I didn’t see it till a few days ago: hidden in those leaves? Wait. Where did that come from? After six years, the first fruit, and that big–how was I completely oblivious that that was there? That’s way bigger than the ones on the Gold Nugget! (Well, to be fair, Pages are for Christmas and the Nuggets are for spring.)

I didn’t think it would or ever could, but it wanted to do what it was meant to do and now hopefully it’s just getting started.

Especially in a pandemic, and we don’t. Wipe it off your fingers with a paper towel. It’s a messy process and it does use a lot of them.

Meantime, what with our air conditioner having gone out during a heat wave–all fixed now–I found that all the chocolate in the house had become untempered. Same taste but grayed a bit and it just didn’t have that snap to it, and then gradually the last of the homemade chocolate, the best stuff around here, just…somehow…vanished. Go figure. Right?

Bless my sweetheart, he proclaimed himself fine with my running the melanger these past 24 hours despite a migraine. The man is a keeper.  Grinding cacao nibs between granite stones is not an overly quiet process.

Last time I poured it out we filled eleven molds–but to be fair, they were shallow silicone ones.

He poured this time, though, and the newer lucite molds are deeper, so even though I processed a half pound more than we ever have, (@Afton: 2.5 lbs) there are five molds cooling over there. There was one particularly deep one which he’d filled to the tippy tippy top.

The smaller the pieces the less the guilt, but not this time. We’ll just have to live with ourselves.

Edit: Oh wait. I *am* tired. There are eleven bars in those five molds, that’s right, just some of them have quite a bit more to them this time. Alright then.

I’ve told this before, but for those who haven’t yet read it: My friend Jean planted a pomegranate tree and two years later brought a half a paper grocery bag’s worth of fruit to church to share that was bursting open, breaking itself into pieces that made it easy for lots of people to get a sample (outside). *She* thanked *us*, saying there was way more than she could eat.

I had never tasted anything like it. I wondered if I’d ever tasted an actually ripe pomegranate before, or was it just the variety (she didn’t remember the name.)

A few years later I got to tell her that she was why I’d researched descriptions and taste tests and planted my own, a Parfianka, the favorite of not only a whole bunch of people online but the owner at Yamagami’s Nursery. I never would have done it had I not tasted hers first and found out what I was missing. She’d definitely earned a thank you.

Mine was a cute little $10 end-of-season-clearance what-they-had-left thing in one of those 4x4x10″ sleeves. Jean was 80 when she planted hers and she clearly started with a more established specimen. Makes sense.

Time and sun and water and dirt and the little one got there just the same. It fascinates me how the tree just keeps on randomly throwing out new flowers with the fruit in various stages, keeping the feeding station open for the bees and hummingbirds.

Jean is 94 this year and I think others will be bringing her pomegranates inside to her. I hope she gets to see them fully ripe again.

And one of my mangoes, too: two more months. I would not make her wait for an Alphonso, knowing she misses the Hadens of her childhood in Hawaii but her late husband even more, but I hope to help her discover something new to love and partake of just like she did for me.

I don’t dare risk bringing one to her in this pandemic, but if her daughter okays it I’ll pass one along through her.

Our yard’s first squirrel-free, scrub jay-free peaches in two years. Very juicy.

And, frankly, rather flavorless. Being in a clamshell sped up the ripening process, I guess–they about fell into my hand–but not the sugaring.

But we got them and they were ours and there are more peaches to come that are protected by citrus-branch barbs rather than plastic boxes.

Somewhere at a pick-your-own farm.

Lillian tried a few raspberries, pulled a face, considered, and then decided, Wait–I like these!

And then the basket was no longer in her reach. All in good time, love.

We wore masks, we socially distanced, we stayed outside and only to say goodbye did she have her kids stand in the doorway for us to see each other and wave hi-‘bye. I hadn’t seen them in two years, but even the then-toddler still knew full well that I was her old buddy and she made my day.

Jennifer had invited me to come see her housewarming present in full production mode. She’s done a great job with it.

I got sent home with a goodly number of apricots and now I need to figure out the best way to save some for when the season is over.