1. The mango is starting to set fruit, and not only that but at the time of year it’s actually supposed to. My little tree is growing up.

2. The silk color was called geranium, and it definitely earned that.

They sold it as a knitted tube that looked like a flat tape yarn. I expected it to stretch, since loosely spun silk does, but it wasn’t the spinning of it that had the looseness and it did in fact shrink somewhat when I washed the mill oils out in hot water.

For now. The weight of it is such that it will probably grow longer/wider in time. Either way, it’s all good.

 What surprised me is how much the look of the yarn changed: it went from flat to round and the tube announced itself. The stitch at the peak of each arrow repeat, though, flattens going over the other two stitches. I really like the effect.

And this only took half the cone.

The Frost peach.

The mystery to me is that you need sunlight to trigger flowering, and this tree in the corner seems to get the least direct sun of any of them. And yet, despite the fact that I only planted it a year ago, it is the mostly densely flowered of them all.

It just wants to be what it was meant to be.

You can when you feel better, she’d said. So I washed the afghan and laid it out to dry and made tentative plans to myself.

I sent off a note today to be sure before I did anything, though, and got the same young nurse practitioner calling back on the phone: no worries, she soothed, you don’t have the flu.

(Yeah I knew that.) Well then does that mean… (the obvious)

You were not a person of interest so we didn’t test you for that.

(First time I’ve ever had THAT phrase applied to me!)

Everything was wonderful, everything was fine, nice to hear I was doing better, I said something about a couple more episodes and it went right past her other than her making sure I’d filled the rescue inhaler prescription, mine having expired. Yes I had.

Me: We’ve been self-quarantining. So if I feel fine is it okay to go to church on Sunday?

Boy did that change her tune fast. NO! No, don’t, not for another week or two. At least. You don’t want to expose other people who might not be as able to fight it off! People with compromised immune systems, the elderly.

And I hung up the phone thinking, you didn’t want me to panic but you finally almost said what we both now knew you were thinking.

So I took pretty pictures of the world coming back to life, marveled at all those blossoms on the one-year-old Frost in the corner, and tried not to have cabin fever.

Last year my Indian Free, the only peach that has to have a pollinator, bloomed just as the last few flowers on the last other tree were fading away. We still got a few fruits from it but one could only wonder whether this was how it was going to be.

Nope. Just Mother Nature playing fifty-two-card pickup. This year, all five peach trees are overlapping at least somewhat and there should be a good crop across the yard all summer long.

Blueberries in the last photo. Last year we were picking those in January, this year it waited till now to start.

Here, let me go pick up those scattered cards. Come time to plant my tomato seedlings I plan to be the queen of spades.

(Baby Crawford peach, Alphonso mango.)

I needed to run the ends in, wash the mill oils out, and give this afghan to its recipient. (There’s a different shade of brown left in stock, machine washable extra fine merino, here.)

So of course that’s one of the first things I asked the nurse practitioner about: how long should I leave it protected from me in its ziplock?

Wait till you’re better, she counseled.

The water was burn-your-skin hot; I pushed it down into it with the bottom of the detergent bottle and let it soak a good one.

Book: finished. Mango: watered. Debate: watched.

I finally got a picture that really shows what that first peach tree looks like out there. It’s glorious.

I looked at the Meyer lemon wistfully–I was going to give some of those to some of my favorite Stitches West vendors.

Next year.

Looking out the window, that one limb…

Black Jack figs grow slowly and stay pretty small, which is nice, but that one limb was going to cross over another in a year or two; better to cut it back a half a foot now to where the growth pattern angled the other way. Never mind the why didn’t I do that earlier.

Man it felt good to get something useful and real-world done.

As long as I was out there I looked at the hose, the blooming mango, our little February drought, considered it–and told myself nope, not quite there yet and headed back in.

My sister found an old photo at Mom’s. I think those were my seventh grade glasses.

1961 or two, the builder was going to plant a single rhododendron in front of each new house on our street. Dad talked him into digging out six feet deep along the front of ours, replacing it with rhodo-friendly soil, and planting the whole length of it in Blue Peters, light purple with deep purple centers.

Years later, a housepainter climbed that brick half-wall to the left in front of the back door where it was laid in more a checkerboard pattern with staggered gaps. The guy stumbled, the bricks crumbled, and between them they sheared off nearly an entire big woody plant and a goodly part of another, too, if I remember right. (He was okay.)

Dad talked to his insurance and then called the local nursery, asking how much it would cost to replace a six foot Blue Peter.

There’s no such thing, he was told. Blue Peters don’t grow that high!

Dad: Mine do.

The first peach flower of the year, ahead of everything but the mango. August Pride.

(Here’s a better picture of the mango.)

I watched a cottontail rabbit jump into and out of the Costco-sized planter my strawberries are in. That, to my regret, answers my question as to whether it was too tall for it. (Well, duh.)  I went to head it off.

Cottontails (says Wikipedia) like to duck into the same sheltering spot every time, which makes it easy for hawks to sit and wait, but it would have had to have cut across in front of me so instead it went straight to–

–the hole past the raised bed under the corner of the fence dug out by one of the nocturnal regulars around here. It would only have done that if it knew it was there and it knew what to expect on the other side.

I immediately boarded up the spot, with mental apologies to the gardeners next door for the return of the goods. It’s got cute twitchy ears, at least. Have fun.

That was yesterday, and today I was trying to figure out how to confess to them.

Until, whoops, guess what was munching on the weeds where the grass used to be.

I think this one was smaller. And yes, it ducked into its usual spot in the coffeeberries. I think the one that went up and over and down to the hole over thataway was going to the spot *it* knew to run to, because it definitely seemed bigger, and it seemed slightly darker–I don’t think it was the same one.

Please tell me we’re not about to have a whole crew of rabbits. I keep marveling at how they could even be here, 65 years after this area was developed and fenced off.

But note that in neither case did they run for the mouth of the mango cage where all that sweet flowering scent is coming out of. So far so good. Yay.

Looking out the window, thinking I needed to get to it re clearing out last summer’s tomato plant that finally froze to death a few days ago, I spotted a bit of color. For all the times I’d looked, it must have been hidden by the leaves that are now brown and shriveled and ready to fall.

I stepped outside thinking, How did that get past me? How did it get past the critters?

There was the smallest, most determined, February-iest-looking Big Boy tomato you ever saw, hanging on and even starting to turn red freeze or no freeze.

And then the mail came.

My new Big Boy tomato seeds.

Time to get to it.

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Happy New Year, Happy Maddy’s Birthday and every greeting of good will along with a peaceful return of the light.

My three-year-old Sungold cherry tomato plant finally passed on but its progeny lives. It was 34F last night but there was a smidgen more sun time than the day before so the younger tomato opened more blossoms to greet it.

Someone’s got to feed the bees in December, right? Welcome. Pull up a chair and c’mon in.

I like that my mango tree is in its greenhouse and doesn’t need me to hire the now-teenager to cover and uncover it from the nightly cold when we travel. Which he can’t do when school’s in session anyway, so, there’s that, too.

But he is quite fond of that unlikely tree, having gone to some effort to help me keep it alive and thriving on numerous occasions.

I saw him sitting before church today and his dad was just then walking a few steps away. I told him, “I made two chocolate tortes for Thanksgiving and was asked to bring one; would you like the other one?”

His sat up straight super fast as he exclaimed, “YES!!!”

His dad stopped right there, laughing, “That would be a yes.”

Alright then. (They’ve had it before. They knew whereof they enthused.)

After we got home I got a note from his mom, checking to see what time would be good to come by to get it, and by the way, what was the name of that variety? She mentioned that they had a little gift for me, too.

They didn’t need to do that!

And so Eli and his mom came over–and to get a peek at how the tree looks a year later.

It’s grown like crazy under the extra warmth of the Sunbubble, perhaps also in part because it didn’t fruit this year; it budded but at a time when we went out of town during a cold front so I’d left it zipped up for five days, whereas usually it gets air movement during the warmth of daylight.

It had gotten black spots and the fruiting growth had died back. It fully recovered after a few months, but there would be no crop this year.

Which means I haven’t had to keep it quite as warm this fall because the most cold-tender parts aren’t there, except for one branch that has started to bud but then didn’t die but didn’t progress, either; it’s simply waiting for warmer days. I’ve apparently kept it just warm enough. So far so good.

I’m not doing the heater thing, I’m just doing the Christmas lights–they’re so much cheaper to run, and two strings gives me a good ten degrees or more in that enclosed space.

We went outside and he walked in the greenhouse to give it a good look. It really is coming along, and our next harvest should be not three fruits but many. Those new shoots are just waiting for the signal.

Eli had gotten one of those first mangoes. He’d earned it.

The gift.

I opened it and laughed in delight for joy and for knowing how great an offering this was. It was his. It was his possibilities. He knew how much I would appreciate it.

Some mango varieties, and I think this is one, produce seeds that are clones of themselves and always grow true.

If I can get this to sprout, and I really hope I can, I’m going to quietly ask his mom if they have room for a large pot and wouldn’t mind the hassle of taking care of it. I already know how much Eli would love one of his own. But let’s see if it does grow first.

But I so love how they made this into a museum display. So much love and meaning in that small package.

We’re two months into the supposed rainy season, still watering the trees, hoping that we get lots of rain later to make up for what we’re having to draw out.

But at least today it was finally chilly and cloudy and it looked like a storm coming in. There’s none in the forecast, but having the sky finally not look like bright cloudless July helped restore faith that I just need to wait awhile. That and having to put on two layers of sweaters–which felt great. Thrift-store cashmere, I’ve missed you.

Pro tip: people who send theirs to the dry cleaners wreck the softness and then wonder what they paid all that money for and often enough end up ditching them. One good tepid-temperature soak in a no-dye no-scents liquid laundry detergent and gentle hand washing, a spinning out in the washer with the water turned off to avoid felting, laying the item out to dry, and there you go: the softness is back.

I give the sweater a good shake before putting it over the wide shower rod; if there was any shrinking, which happens lengthwise the most when it does, that’s enough to put it right.

Got coughed on on Saturday.

Woke up today feeling possibly a little feverish and took it easy, grateful for my flu shot.

I found a perfect, luscious little strawberry hiding away under a November leaf and proclaimed it my antidote. Yum.

So how do you know when a pomegranate is ripe, I wondered?

I went looking for the answer several times over the last month or so, each time hoping to find someone who’d grown that particular type. And found this:

You can’t really tell by the color.

You can’t tell by the stem end.

If you get it wrong and let it stay on the tree too long, it loses some of its flavor. Wait. This was definitely news to me, because I planted my tree after tasting pomegranates from Jean’s that had been left in place till they’d begun to split open. I had never tasted anything like that in my life, and given her age I knew I might not again unless I grew my own. So I did, and wondered if I should leave them till they split open, too.

But they looked so good…

There were two fruits that had made it past the one inch stage (and our not watering while we were gone for three weeks in September when Lily was born.)

Heft it, was the advice I found: it should bulge and it should be heavy.

Define heavy?

It should be large.

It was. How large?

Tap on it and listen.

Oh great, good luck with that one.

Don’t pick it: clip it.

Okay, that I know how to do.

Michelle was going to be dropping by for dinner and I thought, one to try now, one to leave for later in our experiment. We’ll compare and know better what to do next year when there will be many more of them.

The verdict is, it was probably harvested just a little early, but the seeds came away easily (almost all of them anyway) and it was as good as anything from a grocery store.

But the thing that struck me was all those little bite marks and a long clawing on one side. So many times over the months it hung there that something stealthily approached, tasted that gorgeous red exterior, and then went, This is supposed to be food?? and let it be, leaving a mosaic pattern behind. At least once something larger tried hard to pull it away but it held on to where it needed to be to grow.

They never got past the tough exterior.

They never found the sweetness inside.

But we believed, and we did.