The leaves, crinkled and brown, have all given way to the season on my zucchini plant.

So it was a surprise to look out the window this morning and see brilliant upturned yellow on it. I went outside to check: it had! It had bloomed! How?

But once I got close enough to really see it I saw the rest of the story. Something out there in the night had likewise been delighted to find a flower and nearly all of the lower side of it had been eaten clean off, leaving just the top and the inner edges of the sides to go Ta Dahhh!

I chuckled, glad that my plant was still providing sustenance to the world out there. It didn’t have to be for me.

We were waiting at a red light and I was admiring the flowers in the strip in front of the gas station. They cut back somewhat during the drought several years ago, but there is always something in bloom there. Always. Someone clearly puts heart and soul into it, and occasionally I’ve even see the guy at it.

Their immediate neighbor is a garden center.

And it hit me: if you’re sitting there manning that booth all day bored and watching people fill their cars–but also watching people just a few feet further away filling their cars, too, only with flowers and plants and colors and hopes and trees of blooms to come–

–yeah, that’s a temptation I would happily succumb to, too. And it definitely makes their spot much more inviting than the other gas station across the street that sees no reason to spend time nor money on things that don’t bring in money.

Oh, but (looking at where the cars line up vs where they only do when this side of the street is too busy) they do. Even though those flowers are their own reward, they do.

I got to meet Bethany and Nick!

My big sister said her friend was moving to the area and we both told the friend that I’d love to meet her.

Today was the day.

I had no idea what to expect but still, I was kind of picturing someone about Marian’s age.

They looked younger than our kids, and came here for the same reason we did years ago: the tech jobs. They arrived with a gift of ripe lemons from the tree next to their ADU.

The four of us swapped stories for a bit, older Silicon Valley meeting new.

Looking out our window, Bethany was exclaiming over the trees and I offered a tour.

Yes please!

Blueberries, mandarin, pomegranate, sour cherry, apricot, orange, mango, sweet cherry, peach peach peach later-ripening lemon peach peach plum apple apple fig and tucked way over in the far corner over there, a pear.

Did you plant all these? they asked,

All but the lemon and that apple that died and the rootstock is starting to come back up. (For the second time. The Yellow Transparent is my zombie that refuses to stay dead.)

We had completely lucked out in getting a big (.2 acre) yard with a southwestern exposure for all this; it was a for sale by owner, a bit of a fixer-upper and well under market. If only I could replicate that affordability-plus-yard for them!

There was clearly some serious desire to dig in the dirt, and they offered to come help in the garden any time.

I’m looking at my sweet cherry and thinking, biennial crop because I didn’t thin two years ago? Is that why there was so little fruit this year? How about you do a big burst again next spring? One needing some thinning, and then help harvesting? I want an excuse to see them again and to let them come have all they’d like.

Meantime, I sent them off with some pomegranates, and they were as delighted at that as I was at being surprised with their lemons.

I could see why Marian spoke so highly of them. I liked them from the moment we opened that door.

We have an apparently fairly large mystery yardguest whose new digs were discovered today. I wondered whether I could borrow the neighbor’s dog to bark at it, since the thing probably moved in here to get away from it over there. Although, for the dog’s sake, maybe not: it reminded me of a friend’s tale of skunks having territorial fights under her living room to the point of soaking her rug above them with their spray. Let’s not.

The dirt got shoved back to where it had come from and a large object was placed on top of the hole to encourage the thing to move elsewhere.

Definitely needs a trail cam.

But meantime I got six rows of afghan done so far plus a new cowl cast on at the doctor’s waiting room that I continued on while waiting for his doctor across town, and the thing is 1400 stitches along already.

So what I’ve been told is that if your apricot tree’s growth tips get disturbed for any reason they stop right there and that’s it till the next spring: no side branching from below that point, no new leaves nor fruiting tips, nothing. And it’s easy to tell, because the new leaves and limbs start out red.

It went from pot to ground in the spring and almost immediately that was that. Would the limbs or trunk stretch out a bit, at least? I took a measuring tape out every so often but the answer was nope. August was the same as April. I figured after four years in a large pot, it was concentrating on stretching out its roots in their new digs. I certainly hoped so.

We had a heat wave of a few days and then a couple of cool nights and maybe it decided to call it good, that’s a winter, it’ll do. Maybe?

Because a few weeks ago it started doing this. Not the whole tree, just these two limbs. A few days ago  the upper one started adding a side shoot.

The lower one, meantime, got its end chomped off by a bug and I thought, Well, that’s that, then.

It took a deep breath for a couple of days and then sent out a do-over from the node.

I don’t know what I don’t know why it’s doing all this now, but I like it. Did it get its equinoxes flipped? It does make me wish I had the botany degree I almost chose in college.

Last night at dinner our daughter was recounting some experiences and thanking her daddy for teaching her that science is about the how, religion, the why.

Today one of the speakers at church was a scientist at Stanford. He came bounding up to the stand with a little planter full of beautiful small white flowers, like he couldn’t wait to share this! He talked about discovery and learning and how glorious it was to gain new insights into this beautiful world G_d had created for us to live in.

And then he held up his pretty little flowers for all to see. They were petunias (clearly one of the mini varieties).

But what made them different, he said, though we couldn’t see it yet, was that they had been given the gene from a firefly: they glow in the dark.

Then he invited everybody who was curious to come to the mother’s nursing lounge (where I bring chocolate every week, that’s my assignment) because that was the darkest room in the building that could hold a number of people. (I wondered for a moment about kids finding out what else that room held, but I don’t think any noticed.)

First he had one of the women knock on the door and peek in to make sure we weren’t interrupting anybody.

That is the first time in my life that my camera, not my mom or dad from when I was little, scolded me to hold still for the picture. It managed to capture this much.

So. Cool!

(Ed. to correct what my hearing missed: this NPR article says the firefly gene didn’t take well enough so they used other bioluminescence genes from a mushroom and a fungus. But you can actually buy these now.)

Edited again to add after reading NGS’s comment: so if animals eat them, will their poop glow?

The bright red orb caught the setting sun brilliantly. The camera only wanted to pay attention to the apricot and washed it out but in real life that cherry tomato was striking against that dark soil and I did a double take for a split second: how did that get there?!

Bird or squirrel? Something out there wanted jewelry to dress up the young tree for the Homecoming dance.

(Edited to add, Well, huh. If I click on the photo it goes sideways but shows the tomato.)

Her mother had an apricot tree and she misses it.

Which is how the latest Anya seedling very happily found its new home. Funny how a random conversation can lead to fruitful discoveries about each other!

Welcome to August!

This very tall sunflower bowed over in an arch to welcome in the best of the summer with a nod and hello.

(Fusses with photos, wonders why they’re not posting.) You’re just going to have to take my word for it that those two cherry tomato plants are going all out and it’s a good thing that one of my friends is looking forward to being shared with because even the zucchini plants can’t keep up with their output. (Edited in the morning: Okay, there it is!)

Giving or receiving warm ripe homegrown tomatoes–that is one of the best parts of summer.

It’s summer, the finches and doves are foraging for weed seeds where once there was pre-drought lawn and I’m cheering them on because those non-natives are stabby.

And then I stumble across a discussion about how a rare and huge squash is the best of all the squash, that it makes a pumpkin pie that almost doesn’t need any sugar, that it easily keeps for six months, that more gardeners should grow it to keep it from going extinct because it has the best taste and texture.

So I go from the gardening forum to the seed company and check through the comments.

There are pictures of the North Georgia Candy Roaster hanging from trees it was not planted near. One guy said it looks like kudzu, another that theirs vined twenty feet to either direction, and many many saying, you need space for this one!

And I’m looking out the window and thinking, y’know…those big leaves could shade the noxious weeds right out of existence. Sounds like it wouldn’t take very many of them. How many plants did that guy say he had for his 200 pounds of squash in his yard? Hello Second Harvest food bank?

One said his grew so fast that he was afraid to walk out there and stand still too long.

Four bucks and free shipping. Yeah, I did it. Might even plant a seed for this year to see if I can still get anything.

Now I’ll just need a machete to go with it to protect my fruit trees.

A bare spot in the yard over here, a small stray struggling plant seeded by the birds in a corner over there in the way of the peach tree I wanted to plant: would I like him to move this over there? (Motioning across the yard.)

Sure!

And now every summer I look forward to watching the hummingbirds darting in and out among the tall mound of flowers, grateful for eyes that could see what could be that I could not.

There was a Carolyn Hax chat at the Post today, and I always know I can widen my perspective and come away a little better person for reading her peacemaking.

Or she’ll tell it to you straight when you need to hear it.

A woman wrote in, an avid gardener with pollenizers here, veggies there, an herb garden on the side. They’d bought the house three years ago. Her mother had found out she was terminally ill and so dug up her own sage and thyme bushes and gifted them to her daughter for her new house before she passed.

The writer’s father-in-law hated her yard and was not shy about saying so.

And so while the couple was away on vacation, he paid someone to come over to their house, rip out the front and side yards and replace them with what he thought it ought to look like. Why plant flowers when you can have neatly edged mulch?

She was furious and he was furious at her for not being grateful, after all, he’d spent a lot of money on this.

Carolyn was furious, too. She said taking the woman’s husband up on the offer to replant her things together as much as possible would be putting her marriage first and she said if she were going to offer any advice on this that’s what it would be, but no, she most certainly did not have to apologize to her FIL!

At the end of the chat she said her responses were being slow because she had never had so many people write in in response to a question before–all in defense of that poor gardener grieving her mother and those lost plants and connections.

Former copyeditor that I am, I noticed that pollenizer and pollinator were both used in their conversation.

I had to go check that out.

Pollinator is something that conveys pollen from flower to flower. Pollenizer is a plant that offers pollen, that feeds the bees and the hummingbirds. My Stella cherry is a pollenizer for itself but not for my tart English Morello. Got it.

I mentioned the letter to my husband. My easygoing, always-look-at-both-sides husband.

MOVE, he said with emotion, surprising me. There can be no communication with someone who willfully will not hear you like that.

Move to where he cannot easily reach you to trespass like that ever again?

YES.

That had been my first thought, too.

But then (in our case it was a bad boss, not a relative) 38 years ago, we did exactly that.

Because sometimes a picture of a pomegranate seeing itself in various stages of itself is just the thing.

Our friend Dani stopped by two days ago with some Alphonso mangoes–a real sacrifice on his part. One whiff and a long exhale and the thought, Now THAT is what a mango is supposed to be. Thank you, Dani!

Then I took the sad little wannabes from Costco that had been picked too early, chopped them up with a bunch of green onions and threw them in with some peanut satay sauce: playing vegetables was the best they could attain to.

Dani’s were the real thing. Peeled and devoured.

So my thought was I’d sprout the seeds from his. I know he doesn’t have space nor sun but maybe he’d love gifting a baby tree to someone who does. And maybe I just want to see what they do.

Mangoes come mono- or polyembryonic. You want the multiple embryos if you want one just like the parent whose fruit you ate, while monoembryonic is a genetic potluck–so of course the Alphonso is a mono type.

Googling ensued. Videos were watched. One person said let the pit dry for two days and then cut the seed covering here with scissors and pull the seed out.

I tried that. It was every internet hahahaaayouactuallybelievedthat?!! result.

The next video, the guy got a gouge going in that woody thing and then took needlenose pliers to try to slowly, forcefully, hopefully, with great effort, manhandle that thing open and off.

The camera cut away and they did not show you all of what he had to go through, but there it was. Voila. Seed.

My scissors had gone, What are you trying to DO to me! Back into the kitchen gadgets drawer.

My pruning shears went, I’m not going to try it, you try it! Okay, you tried it. I won’t do it. So there.

Huh. Well I do have those long-handle tree pruners where you pull down the string that pulls on the lever that moves the blade that cuts the limb a dozen feet over your head and hope you have a good helmet on; maybe I could manipulate that blade up close while pulling on the string way over thataway out of reach without, y’know, cutting my finger off or my skirt in half in the process. Dunno how well that would work for a precision cut on such a small piece. Where is that thing, anyway?

Remember the old Life cereal commercial, Let’s get Mikey to try it! He hates everything!

Yeah, well. Around here, Mikey seems to have gone into hiding. And that’s probably a good thing.