Found this little guy going from blueberry flower to blueberry flower.

The Stella cherry looks raptor-footed. And here’s the Santa Rosa plum.

The flowers on the Babcock are so different from the others, the punk rockers of the peach world in their spikes of pink.

And in the where did *you* come from department, Wednesday evening I found a small forgotten pot left where the winter rains helpfully dripped off the roof and inside was an apricot that had had what I think of as first year syndrome–where they barely come up and then look dead and you think well that was that. And then the second year they suddenly take off like crazy. I didn’t plant any Anya kernels this year but here it is anyway; all I could guess was that someone out there needs their apricot tree and if I wasn’t going to grow one well then it would just have to grow itself from last year.

I moved it into this somewhat larger pot and it went from tiny scrunched up leaves to three distinct branches and more and much bigger leaves in two days. I could see the difference between morning and evening both days.

It’s going to need a bigger pot, fast. Cool!

Part of me is quite sorry–any tree gone is a loss. Most of me is relieved. It was an invasive planted who knows by whom in the wrong spot. The deed is done.

Turns out the core of the trunk was in very bad shape, crumbling to nothing, with the damage radiating out to the edges in a few places. We may well have dodged more than we knew.

The baby peach tree is going to do great there.

It came late afternoon yesterday. I plunked it in a pot with good soil and watered it and quick got dinner done and then went outside in the now-dark to take its picture. My phone said, Hold it steady…

The tree guy came today to give me a quote. He asked if I was in a hurry. I said I hoped to get it done before nesting season is underway.

And so the highly invasive Chinese pepper tree, the kids’ old climbing tree whose crotch is far too high now to get a foothold into and whose sticky sharp bark would shred a kid’s clothes in trying–as it did back then–and whose roots are doing damage, is going away tomorrow. It is less than my arm’s reach from the house. Its branches hang over it, a fire hazard that could get our insurance canceled. It’s time.

The new Kit Donnell peach will take its place. Far enough away from the fence. Far enough away from the house. Not too close to the fig. The arborist and I considered the thing and then marked the spot with a large rock.

We will have a living reminder of all those incredible peaches that Andy Mariani sold us of the variety that he and his late friend Kit created: the ones that were the most worth all of those drives to Morgan Hill and back on all those beautiful summer days.

They’ll be here now.

(Can you just hear the squirrels rubbing their paws in glee and going, Oh, it is ON!)

Blueberry flowers always remind me of the ruffly petticoats and jumpsuits of early childhood.

As usual, the August Pride has the earliest peach flowers. (It did not get the second round of copper spray yesterday with the others since it is no longer dormant.)

I took a box of lemons to church labeled “Meyers: Take one.”

After texting and getting delighted responses I delivered some to my neighbors to either side. There is nothing like pulling one off a tree and inhaling that immediate rich perfume in the air.

Eagerly waiting for more things to wake up out there.

(Babcock peach branch in foreground. This photo embiggens because I scaled it down from 1.5M. Which worked.)

The Meyer lemon tree has slipped into every other year mode and this is being a really big year. So. Many. Lemons.

Last year there were maybe a dozen total, so I knew to thin what would come after that; you can train a tree back into giving a moderate amount every year if you work at it.

The only problem was, I couldn’t see. My pre-op eyes couldn’t make out the color differential between leaves and tiny green baby lemons, and from what I could find in the blur standing away from the thorns there didn’t seem to be very many after all anyway.

As if.

This is after I’ve picked it twice. Normally I would juice them and freeze it in ice cubes but I just don’t have the space right now and certainly not for gallons’ worth.

Trying for as fresh as possible, I went out and got more this afternoon (wore a mask because I’ve had a cold this week) and offered the home care nurse the box or as many from it as she’d like. She took about five. It was a start.

We seriously needed a grocery run. Neither of us was up to it yet; after some consideration, wanting to risk as little exposure towards others as possible, I put in an order.

When the guy showed up from Costco I thanked him–and offered him a bag of “Lemons, picked from my tree!”

Wow. Cool. He was not expecting that. Thank you!

I need to be done with this cold (mild, mostly, it’s the night coughs that annoy) so I can get more bags and then do a little door-to-door reverse-begging amongst the neighbors. You know how they warn that if you live near a gardener not to leave your cars unlocked on summer nights or they’ll be infested with zucchinis?

That lemon-fresh smell, that’s what you want. Cut one in half, knock the seeds out, and it’ll clean and disinfect a kitchen sink better than anything.

Dannette stopped by today, one of my old Purlescence friends. That shop’s been gone about ten years now.

An Anya apricot seedling got us to finally reconnect in person. I had two up for grabs: a 42″ one in a big pot that was going to be a handful to transport and a 24″ one in a one gallon pot. Both were started last year and I’m sure the one will catch up quickly to the other once its roots have some space.

The big one had clearly sounded good beforehand because it’s a nice-sized tree but in person, the small one was so much easier to just pick up and put in her car that it was an easy call.

We caught up a bit. The cute baby that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee bounced in her arms after a book signing that we carpooled for to San Francisco is somehow 12 now, with her oldest in high school.

I reminisced about being at knit night at Purlescence when I excused myself and walked outside to take a call and then walked back in and announced to the crowd, This is my son. He’s calling to say he’s engaged! The whole room roared congratulations and huzzahs as I held the phone out for him to be able to hear.

His oldest is in high school too, now.

Times change around us, we get older, but with friends you just pick up right where we left off.

She’s finally going to have her apricot tree!

Next year there will be no happy anticipation of the best ten days or so of the summer when the Kit Donnell peaches are ripe at Andy’s because there will be no Andy’s.

Raintree is a nursery my sister shopped at when she lived in Washington. Loved the place.

Nobody else seems to stock that variety this year, or if they did, people who know a good thing have snapped it up. I sure hope so. It worried me that a big wholesale grower has taken it off their list; it cannot be allowed to vanish when Andy’s goes. He and Kit created it. The peaches are too juicy and the skins too thin to hold up to commercial mass production. The flavor!

Today we finally decided and now Raintree’s stock is officially down by one.

When I put its roots into the ground we should have music to celebrate: how about, Another One Bites the Dust?

And now I can’t wait for Spring for my tree to show what it can be now.

Meantime, in Minnesota, in response to ICE beating US citizens on their own properties without provocation nor warrant nor legal right to trespass (“But you have an accent.” “You have an accent too!”) the people have figured out a new way to inform their neighbors when ICE is on their street: set off their car alarms via their key fobs.

This is after one of their agents threatened a young child that he’d put a bullet in her head for protesting with her mom. Putting a woman in her place: start’em young. And after one threw a flash-bang at a car with children, injuring a six month old. A baby.

Republicans have a chance to redeem a little of their names for history if they at long last impeach and convict the pedophile-in-chief and end this siege. Do it now.

Because anyone who doesn’t, you don’t have to worry we’ll find out your name is in the Epstein files: you’re already making it clear.

Two days ago I thought he’d spilled a glass of water  (“No…”) and dabbed it out with a towel. Yesterday my sock got wet again when I stepped on the edge of the carpet there. Today it was Houston, we’ve got a problem. The soaking went several feet wide now.

This house was built with the water pipes running under the slab but ours failed years ago. The then-plumber explained that the reverberations from one leak can make a weak old pipe give way in more places and in fact we had, suddenly, 16 of them. We could jackhammer the entire length of the house–or we could run new pipes across the roof.

Done.

And so here I am 32 years later, going, yeah we had a freeze, but there’s nothing under the house. The wall is dry. No sign of dripping through the ceiling. Somehow water is seeping up through the concrete from the ground, is the best we can tell, even though it hasn’t been raining. This is going to be $$$.

We tried to figure out who we should call for a problem whose cause we don’t know.

Well, a plumber would be able to pinpoint the sounds of the water if it has anything to do with pipes.

I’ve been pushing towels at it all day and the washer is running a load of them as I type. But I think at the very least we’re about to lose the carpeting in the living room.

So I did what one does in such circumstances: I went outside this evening, looked at my oldest Anya tree (2019) that didn’t get to go in the ground because it didn’t look as healthy as the other, but that could be because it’s been potted too long, and finally, a year after I bought a bigger pot and soil, did that transplant. By myself. Without telling anyone.

Those branches are fragile and so am I. It was heavy. That rootball was an impenetrable mass, no easing individual roots apart like I had intended, not while trying to keep it from falling over and crashing. I hope I didn’t leave bare spaces between it and the new soil underneath because air prunes off roots but I’m sure in some places I did. I ended up pushing the mass down with my knee from trunk to pot edge, around and around to try to connect it to below. And then threw those pants in the washer with the towel load.

It was all frankly a stupid thing to do because a friend told me he was going to get some kids from church to come do it for me, but I never got a firm time nor day. I didn’t want to pay another repairman, I didn’t want another major home repair (termites were $79k) and in that moment what I wanted most was the satisfaction of getting this one thing done that had bugged me for over a year so my plant could go live happily ever after and maybe even give me some fruit.

Besides, what are back exercises for.

It feels so good to have gotten it done.

I half-apologized and warned the friend from church so the kids wouldn’t be disappointed, and thanked them for the offer.

I found myself in the back yard yesterday looking at two Anya apricot seedlings to the right: they were small, but only because the pots they were in weren’t very big. There was a third one in a big pot to the left and it’s twice the height even though the same age. Those littler roots need some space!

Someone would love one if they only knew.

I found myself saying a prayer, going, If there’s someone who would really want one, please help me find them. Please make it so obvious that I won’t second-guess myself over it–because with Andy’s closing there aren’t going to be any do-overs after this year.

The phone rang today. It was Dave. We’ve known him since he was a teenager in our ward in New Hampshire; his kids are teens now. He was thinking he’d like to stop by and catch up a bit? See how we were doing? (He knows about Richard’s foot.)

Absolutely!

He was at one point asking questions about taking care of his young pluot tree.

I asked him if he liked apricots.

Dave, with intensity: I LOVE apricots!

He was certainly not expecting what happened next. To carry home an apricot tree, much less a specialty one–but he was very very glad to. Cool! Given a choice between little and easily carried or big he chose little. It’ll make up the difference quickly once it’s in the ground.

Just like that. Done.

And, selfishly, I’m delighted that I’ll get to see that tree growing up and becoming all that it’s meant to be.

The news. My stars. But I feel I owe it to my country to know what is being done in our name on our dime and to speak up.

I decided to go look at something else.

The recent rains did their winter magic: there is green sprouting across the yard and, walking off to the right, the Meyer lemons are ripe and vivid yellow against the deep green leaves and perfect. When have they looked like that! Wow!

Oh wait. The cataract surgery: I can see them as they appear–for the first time in years. At a time when the other trees are standing there bare, look how gorgeous the colors of that lemon are! Cool!

Heading back towards the door, I saw the pot.

I figure critters prefer planting things in pots than in the ground because the soil is a lot easier to dig into, but why do they always go for the edges? Never ever the center. Okay, scrub jays, they perch on the rims and lean over towards their feet, but what’s a squirrel’s excuse?

About the width of a cherry tomato away from this seedling was a cluster of six or seven all sprouting together.

In January. Outside. I love California.

I’ve learned that newly sprouted tomato plants don’t thrive if you pull them out to replant them no matter how gently you do it, nor would that competitive cluster fighting each other’s roots come to much, so they’re gone now and the one that was growing by itself has the whole pot to itself. I will soak it to help hold the soil closely together around it when I move the lot of it into something bigger and then keep it as I found it, frost-free under the awning and close to the warm house for now.

It’s definitely got a head start on the brand new year. I can’t yet know if its fruit will offer the sweetness of what I planted last year but it’s veggies and it’ll be nourishing and I’m willing to put in the effort to find out. Spring offering itself in early January, how could I not.

I love our flowering pear this time of year. In the low light of December every leaf is an exuberant Christmas light.

I untangled the two old dead strands of lights off the mango tree yesterday before running out of sunlight. It was a job. I got a single new string on today, wondering whether I should just think, hey, heat rises, or whether I should add a second. I didn’t want future me to have to go through that much trying to separate leaves and branches and lines again.

But the point is to take care of my tree so I’m probably not done yet.

For the record, blue lights are the least intrusive for nighttime. The only ambient glow I can find is through the camera lens.

I stockpiled when incandescent bulb sales were banned. All I want is the heat. There’s a whole market waiting in this climate for someone to come up with a safe non-light warming system for tender trees: old-style Christmas lights have been the standard off-label use for decades.  There are a lot of citrus trees around here. C’mon, Silicon Valley, you can figure out a way.

(Nighttime photo.)

It amused me no end and I went to take its picture. Where did I put my phone… And then I got distracted to something else.

There had been a pair of pomegranates hanging onto the tree that I could have picked weeks ago but I’d never gotten them past the critters long enough to see how long they should/would stay there if I let them. I had a small pop-up style birdnetting tent–not over them, trying to balance it in those branches was too fiddly, but sideways with the fruit sort of just inside the bottom of it and the top of the tent facing the fence: En garde! (Autocorrect added an n. I am much amused.) I knew they were accessible but the critters who could reach it didn’t have to know that from their favorite runway and I knew they did not want to be in a cage.

It worked!

Michelle’s a fan of pomegranate juice and on her last night here I squeezed the ones that had been kept in the fridge, and that was as much of that work as I wanted to do at the time.

I checked. The two on the tree were still there.

This morning she was back in Boston and some sheer curiosity got me to go outside to check those fruits again.

Picture a little kid on Christmas morning tearing open a present: the strip of wrapping paper still attached to the tape in their hand while the box falls away. That’s essentially what was left: two stems, each with a thin strip of the bright red outer rind.

While all of the rest was utterly gone.

I laughed. The timing! As if they’d only been holding on for her! How did something get to both of them among those thorns, how did it eat that much? I wanted to get a photo. Didn’t I put it–where was it? Huh. Whatever.

We were just sitting down to dinner when something just really nagged at me and I apologized and said, I have to know if I left that phone in the car, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere. He said Go ahead, and meant it, so I got right back up from the chair I’d just sat down in.

It wasn’t in the car.

It was on the ground in front of the passenger door for all to see where it had fallen out of my purse when I got out this morning.

Had I waited ten more minutes there wouldn’t have been enough light left to see it there and I might well have stepped on it going to the car door to look. I’m just glad it was still there.

Thank you pomegranate silliness…

(Embiggen to really see. The picture was taken this morning.)

While so many trees are dropping their leaves and skinny-dipping their way towards winter, the California Coffeeberries are dressing themselves in sweet-smelling blooms, ready to provide: the bees and hummingbirds, for now, the berries to come, everything else. The density of the branches in the spring provides perfect cover for many a bird and nest. This, not the bird-poisoning-berry non-native Nandina, is what everyone should plant here. (It can survive down to -20F.)

I wrote that. Stopped a moment. Considered the thing. I put down the computer and slipped on the gardening shoes and walked outside where it was cold and dark and a bit wet from a storm and leaned into a flower cluster, and oh my word, took a deep breath.

I had been admiring it all day. But I had somehow forgotten to go and take in the whole of it.