Just one more from the museum.

I saw it almost immediately in this rendition of the Tree of Life: the fifth figure from the left. This artist knew breast cancer.

While, here at home: the flowers on the sweet cherry have bloomed to the top now.

The afghan for my niece, the daughter of my late sister-in-law, is coming along; 49″ wide by 40″ long so far, 50/50 cashmere/cotton at a 3/6 weight (size 9s for when I check back later to use up the last of this mill-end.)

Redwoods grow as tall as they do so as to capture the nightly ocean fog on their needles, where it condenses and drips off the tips while some runs down their trunks to the roots below. Which is why they have to be shallow, and why they’re so much at risk in a drought, especially down here in the valley, and why they’re terrible to plant close to buildings.

Volunteers have been replanting redwood seedlings in the parks by the coast where the trees had burned. Will it take a few thousand years to get back to what had been? Yes, which is why they’re getting started.

My long twiggy saplings have the fog dripping down around them in the yarnover spaces.

The now-friend who got those freecycled paper bags last week? Turns out she grew up in my town with an apricot tree in her yard and wished she had one.

Hey.

It wasn’t very big, and it had only just started to wake up and take on the new growing season, but it was one of last year’s and when I transplanted it into a  bigger pot, I noted the good root structure. It reminds me of my third-year one, that was tiny the first year and took off the second. This one has started to, too.

And so an offspring-of-Anya has found a happy home and we got a chance to sit and visit a minute.

She asked if I might like to see pictures as it grows?

Is this a trick question?

My little Urban columnar apple is still not that much bigger than when I got it in eight years ago, and this year it got a 13″ rabbit cage for its own good. It had its little moment there of, Hey, look! I can still fit into my wedding dress!

Man can it bloom. It was made for spring.

The paper bags got picked up.

I wasn’t expecting this at all! (Held at an angle to catch the light better.) It’s gorgeous!

It took me a moment to grok the thing.

And then I started trying to rescue about twenty stitches: the wooden tip had come clean off the cable when my knitting needle self-destructed as I’d picked my project up.

Huh. I think the last time that happened was a good fifteen or so years ago. I looked at the tiny screw sticking out, thought, well that’s probably stripped, and simply jammed the pieces back together. And they held! For three rows so far.

Didn’t I just buy that longer size 9 needle to work on that afghan? I did. Where did I buy that. It’ll come to me. Always spring for the better-made needles (those weren’t.)

Meantime, the last Anya seedling is suddenly really getting the hang of this sunlight and green and roots thing. Even if it kind of looks from that angle like it’s being devoured by a tick.

This one’s roots needed somewhere to go, that paper cup wasn’t doing it anymore, so it just went into a large pot like last year’s seedlings. It feels like my baby just graduated kindergarten or something.

The knitting: somehow it got a lot longer than it felt like it was.

Between the yarnovers that draw the eye upward, these are redwood saplings.

Like the many being planted in our parks to start the thousand-year journey towards replacing the ones that have burned.

My friend Sue, recently home after two years abroad, put out a note that today was going to be Pi Day and she’d left her pastry blender behind in South Africa; could she borrow one?

Sure!

And so she was the other person who stopped by yesterday, briefly, but it got me thinking I wanted to celebrate the day, too. I had prefab pie crusts in the freezer and could cut to the chase instead of the butter.

Last year when we had so many tart cherries on our tree, I pitted and bagged them by the quart so that they’d be the right size to pop right into a crust. I grabbed a ziploc out of the freezer this morning.

But it was the season’s remainders and the amount a bit random, about half, which explained why it seemed so small.

Well huh. I’d forgotten about that.

I rolled the crust out very thin and lined four large ceramic bowls with it: two for cherry, two, peach slices, and, just for fun, folded the edges down galette style. They took about 45-50 min at 350.

Each of the four Mel and Kris cereal bowls served two.

Meantime, on the peregrine front, Grace the falcon is trying to get that gravel just so for the eggs that are about to arrive at City Hall. She’s had several tiercels (males) fighting for the territory and her and one was the victor long enough to get a name and possibly future progeny–only to be ousted the next day by a new new tiercel.

Who so far is TT, for, The Tiercel. Much bonding has taken place and he’s definitely the victor of the year.

They’re really going to have to give him his own name before they start naming the eyases (babies) to come.

Friends dropped by for a visit; we hadn’t seen each other in awhile because we’ve been doing church by Zoom so as not to expose my mom when we finally get to go see her, but with Tony’s death they just needed to come make sure everything was okay.

We’re fine, no worries, great to see you.

She’s an avid gardener so I showed her the littlest apricot seedlings: This one’s a week old, this one’s a few days.

They’re so cute!

Aren’t they?!

I offered her one for their condo patio and she’s considering it. But then she made clear what she really wanted: to know when the peaches at Andy’s were coming on, because I’d given her some of those last year and she couldn’t wait to go buy more.

We are looking forward to it together.

Tony and I couldn’t talk politics at all, but we could definitely talk fruit trees with enthusiasm.

I’m pretty sure he would have loved watching one of my apricot seedlings grow up, knowing he was nourishing something both rare and the best to be found. He loved to cook, and he would have done really great things with those in a few years.

But it was not to be. Last night our Italian friend peacefully passed on at a ripe old age as his beloved garden was starting its new season of blossoms and green and fruit and growth for his wife and daughter to hold him close by.

It was in the 50s today, chilly for new seedlings, but here it is. I get such a kick out of baby trees, and rare ones especially.

I pointed the camera at the other one whose small Root Riot plug had been planted inside a paper cup to give its first root some room: I couldn’t really see anything, but maybe the camera could.

There it is. On its way.

Note that the ones in the paper cups are the two that had been attacked by green mold or fungus or whatever it was, of which there is no sign whatsoever now. The direct sunlight really did cure them. All the seedlings I lost to rot the last few years and that’s apparently all I’d needed to do.

But I had to know to, which is why I’ve been making a bit of a point about it in case someone happens to stumble across a single one of these posts at random.

The beginning of the season, of new life, nature taking first breath to offer oxygen to us.

Pictures taken yesterday and today. You can see the sprout forming to the right and the white root of a root that was not there Monday, newly anchoring, sustaining, becoming.

Just a little more soil right there to make sure it doesn’t dry out overnight.

In case you don’t hear back from me right away tomorrow.

Last week we were 15-20 degrees warmer than normal and it was quite pleasant.

This week, not so much: the mango tree has just started a major flush of growth, which means the buds are about to burst forth and some may have, and now it’s under layers of frost covers against possible freezing tonight (she typed, thinking of all those peach blossoms, too.) It’s cold out there. It was cold all day despite two layers of sweaters and a working furnace.

And so of course tomorrow is the day they’re turning our power off from 8-5 to upgrade the electrical system in our neighborhood. The fridge and freezer must not be opened, no food will be heatable. Oh you were going to be working from home? Not Wednesday you’re not.

I haven’t worn thermals since Alaska, but I’m going to. The hot cocoa’s going straight into a thermos first thing in the morning, and I’m going to need it after uncovering that tree out there.

But we did get a hundredth of an inch of rain last night with this cold front and that’s at least something.

I just read the fine print on the notice: shutdown may be canceled without notice due to weather or unforeseen circumstances.

Meaning, if the power is on you still don’t dare open the fridge because that might be right when it cuts off. Or totally not. Come on, guys, how hard is it to shoot an email to a few dozen households?

So we’ll see how it goes.

The plum tree has decided to start joining the party.

As for the two Anya kernels that had been showing a bit of green mold so I’d given them up as likely lost (but had kept them from drying out just in case), I put them out in the sun yesterday and today during the hours when it was warm out there. Having swelled up to show above the top of the soil before getting infected, they’d at least tried, and I halfway held onto that as a good sign.

I was quite surprised at not seeing the green bits anywhere tonight and what is left of the mold has retreated markedly in size as well as color.

As for the kernels themselves: one of the ones that had been infected has started to split open to sprout, which I did not expect at all. So it looks like I’ll have two out of the original three make it, and who knows, maybe the third one will surprise me, too.

Who knew it was that effective? Sunlight really is the best disinfectant.

After writing last night’s post, it bugged me in the night that I hadn’t yet done everything I could, so the first thing I did in the morning was to get my last Costco pot out and one of the new bags of lobster soil. I transplanted in another dormant apricot seedling. While it still was.

What surprised me is that the locally produced topsoil it had been in was hardpacked so tight that the water I’d given it yesterday had never made it through to the roots; apparently it was just absorbed by the fabric bag I’d wanted that tree-let out of. No wonder that other one over there looks so blackened. Yow.

One of the selling points on the lobster compost is that it retains moisture but not so much as to rot the roots. I’d read that and thought, well, that’s spin that’s trying to claim it both ways.

But in actual use this past year that’s turned out to be a pretty fair description after all of how it treated my plants. Either way, today’s seedling now has good soil and a good watering and we’ll see how it does.

Then I ordered another threesome of pots–which is a bit ambitiously wishful, since I have two more seedlings but only one looking alive. But there are three new seeds gestating, and while only one looks promising, it does and I’m holding it to it. The pots are not huge, but they’re big enough to grow an apricot to a giftable size while staying a light enough weight that I can manage lifting them. Including over next to or even in the air-conditioned house if it hits 118 again this summer. I want them to get to grow this year.

So: two yearlings (hopefully) and one new-to-come: I’m ready for them.

Or I will be after the next Costco delivery.

Having had such huge success with the 46″ tall Anya-offspring apricot seedling that was planted in lobster compost last year, two weeks ago I transplanted two of the ones that had come out so tiny into the stuff. One was 4″ tall, the other 6″. I wasn’t sure they’d even survived, and then I accidentally ripped a few roots despite all I could do as I moved them.

I had more bags on order but I could at least do those two.

From what I’ve been able to read, for an apricot branch that loses its growth tip, that’s it, that branch won’t grow nor even sprout out any side branches from its lower nodes until the next year–and that’s certainly how it was for mine. The severe heat last summer did some serious crisping.

Two weeks into their new digs, a week of daytime warmth, and guess which yearling burst out with the green first? The not-dead-yet 4″ one, and there are hints of green on the other. They’re ahead of the ones that got no lobster. Even though their roots were messed with.

So here’s my one that’s starting its third year: it likewise started off tiny and stunted and then played catch-up last year, making it to 26″ only because I didn’t know you shouldn’t do summer pruning and I was trying to keep the two sides at the same height.

And then I found out why that had been a mistake.

But its success is why I was sure the little ones were worth keeping trying.

There are three more small ones, two of which I expect to do fine and one that…it will be a surprise if it does, it looks pretty black, but we’ll see.

I have a friend who told me he’d love to have one of those apricot trees. I figure first I have to get it tall enough to remotely look like at least a bush.

I have high hopes.