It got down to the 40s last night and it will tonight, too; it was time. I restrung the Christmas lights on the mango tree (I’ll clearly need another strand this year) and had to remember how to program Richard’s homemade thermostat. 13C is a little low–I changed it to trigger on at 14C, not sure if the line was connected all the way given the tomatoes growing over it.

They clicked on about 9:00 pm. Okay, that works. No cover quite yet.

Meantime, the Meyer lemon leaves were showing a bit of yellow and needed some micronutrients; I stopped by Yamagami’s Nursery.

Where I found myself in a conversation with one of their people and he was an avid fruit tree enthusiast so of course we hit it right off.

I described the bugs that had utterly devoured my sour cherry’s first attempt at leafing out, that I had caught in the act on the second round, just a giant horde of black beetles, so many that they were climbing all over each other in their attempts to get at those leaves and I asked if they were Japanese beetles?

“Sure sounds like it. They only come out at night.”

“Yup!”

(I had read that traps just attract more to your yard, so I wasn’t surprised when he said) “And nothing kills them. There’s really nothing you can do.”

In happy anticipation of being able to help, I grinned, “Oh yes there is”–and I told him what I’d done. Having found a suggestion online, I’d asked around for the ashes from anyone’s barbecue grill, was given about a half gallon’s worth, and I went out that night and doused those beetles with that powder.

They struggled and fell off immediately and died, and according to what I’d read, it breaks their joints. Very satisfying. As was watching the doves pecking around near the base of the tree later. Git’em!

And then, what I didn’t say to him but should have, was, I then scattered those ashes across those leaves every night and rinsed them off in the mornings so that they could get their sunlight. Back on at night as a protective layer. And it worked.

He had this excited ‘Wait till I tell Nancy…!’ look in his eyes. And I came away feeling like I had just solved a big problem for a whole lot of people. Spread the word. Grill baby grill! I wish I could put the real credit where it belongs but I don’t remember where I found it; I do remember I spent a fair amount of time trying to look up an answer to that very vexatious problem, so afraid I was going to lose that tree, so I’m hoping this post will help the next person find the idea a little faster.

Ashes for crashes, grill dust is a must.

An elderly friend needed a ride today and so I got to spend some time with Gail.

We talked gardening and trees a bit and she laughed as she remembered what her father had planted when she was a kid: a bitter almond tree and a sweet almond tree. She told me, The squirrels never touched the sweet almonds. Because of the bitter!

If they only knew, right?

I remember once when Robin discovered a chocolatier who did the most exquisite work. Reading her description was a good way to go on a chocolate torte baking binge if nothing else, and it was before Timothy Adams was available as a local remedy for such a keen oh-I-(quietly)-wish.

And then, you guessed it, a little while later there was a surprise box in the mail: they came in a delightful little hinged wooden box, so perfect in presentation in every way and then, oh wow! Definitely lived up to their descriptions.

She hadn’t wanted me to miss out.

There were two last plastic produce clamshells for the season on the Fuji tree last week guarding the goods from the squirrels, one at the upper right inside the fork in the dark branch here, you can see right where I picked, and one at the lower left corner. I opened the upper one Friday after a friend of ours did me a big favor with a physical task beyond my abilities. (I’ve started him a hat. He doesn’t know that yet.) He loves a good apple and to him it was the perfect thank you.

So I was standing where I took this photo from looking up right there into that part of the tree the day before Robin passed and there was no sign whatsoever that these blossoms were coming to be.

But I think I know now why I felt I needed to go back out there today and pick that very last apple of the year. Not tomorrow. Go see now. I did, staring in disbelief, and than ran for the camera.

Someone had sent me the most heavenly bouquet of apple flowers. In October.

Tuesday, there were these tiny bits at the (okay, what’s that word for the armpits of the branches against the trunk–coming back two minutes later to add, I just have node idea) on the fig tree that I thought might become the breba crop of next spring.

And then we had an unseasonably hot week with more of the same predicted.

Today, with zero expectation of seeing anything different, on a whim I went to go take a good look.

Blink. Eight figs. Eight actual figs. In October. On what was a whip in March with badly-strangling roots that I had to cut apart so I could plant the thing, with the tree kind of sitting there for a month or two while they recovered and took the measure of their new environment.

That little tree clearly just wanted to do what it was created to do.

So what would you do with a volunteer tomato taking over the yard, flowering month after month but never setting a single fruit while the other tomatoes do? Keep waiting? Rip it out before it takes any more nutrients from the cherry tree above?

So that’s what was on my mind as I stepped out the door to start the Tuesday watering.

I’d noticed the little junco for a few days now.

Clearly I wasn’t the only one.

There it was on the box again, right next to me as I stepped onto the patio. With one eye gone and the other warily watching the sky, it didn’t take off till after I went past it and turned back again.

That post yesterday about being the boss of this place?

There, up on the telephone wire. I mentally apologized to the Cooper’s hawk for wrecking his breakfast and quickly got back in the house and out of the way.

He stayed there patiently another minute or so, feathers unruffled but a sure thing gone.

For now.

I finished the watering tonight and went off to the first night of a new knitting group; Alex found herself with a copy of my lace shawls book as a thank you. May there be many happy memories there to come.

I was asked if I would, said sure no problem, and ended up back at the DMV to ask for a one-day permit for driving the PNO van.

And got told no, the buyer needs to come in and get that. But they spelled out all the fees he would have to pay and they were half what he was expecting. Cool. I’m quite happy to make his life easier.

Then this evening I was out working in the yard, noting how much faster the late sun fades now. The camphor tree had several thick clumps of thin, weak sprouts from where it had previously been trimmed by Chris’s crew and those had gotten tall enough to start shading a few fruit trees a bit and this would not do. It’s easier to remove those when they’re new.

So there I was with this big trimming hook overhead when suddenly to my left a raven took off from the redwood tree just past the fence, heading towards my backyard.

Watching it come, I waved my arms as if to shoo it away as soon as it came past the shed.

Darn if the thing didn’t do an immediate abrupt turnaround and go straight back to that tree. If it was testing me it was conceding that it had been caught.

I’ve seen you chase my Cooper’s hawks and trying to steal their catches. I know you would kill my songbirds’ babies and that your population has been exploding while theirs are just hanging in there. You know I own this yard. Not you.

Then it came again.

There was nothing I could have done to keep it from doing what it wanted to do.

I waved again.

It again braked hard mid-air as if its heels sought to connect with something to help and again it veered back to where it had come from, swooping behind the redwood this time as if to hide.

Here it comes again.

Once is an oddity, two is curious, three and more, definitely a pattern–I started counting, watching, letting the camphor take care of itself a moment; nothing here but that raven and me.

I surely looked ridiculous. I was just a powerless little thing on the ground and its flights were almost as high as the top of that redwood. Each time it came in in a path that would take it straight over my back yard and me in the middle of it, but each time I would wave my arms just before it was quite overhead and each time it would stop right there, wings raised high flapping hard not going one inch further, then sharply away. The times it spent disappeared into the back of the tree became a few seconds longer.

The thirteenth time it retreated at last not to the redwood but across the clear open sky above several neighbors’ houses, one beyond the other, getting smaller and smaller and gone.

Yeah, like I trust that–I kept staring.

One potato, two potato, ten potato, coming from the left again with the redwood having been cover for part of its way back and here it came again. Whether it was determined to go where it wanted to go in the path it wanted to go in if I would just stop paying attention to it or whether it was simply a young one having fun playing a game with me and enjoying the attention–and corvids do play–I don’t know. But from there we went through three more redwood-to-almost-t0-me runs.

Territory: understood. Dominance: mine.

Finally, on round sixteen, it really did head way away, faster this time, across that open treeless airspace and at last that was the end of that.

I know crows and ravens recognize human faces and teach their young to at least the second and third generation to respond to those same faces. I can only wonder if this one had a family memory of a human with a gun.

Exactly two weeks ago the red leaves and the branches they stem from, some over a foot long now, did not yet exist. Only the green. I keep going outside and snapping photos every day and comparing because there are noticeable changes by evening from the mornings. Go mango grow!

Meantime, this was the Saturday and Sunday in October when the Mormon Church has its general conference in a series of two-hour sessions.

I had been letting worrying about my hands keep me from doing long stints of knitting for too long now–a half hour at a time, maybe, and the limitation was frustrating. I decided this was my chance to see what I really could do if I pushed myself, and so as we listened I got eight hours of knitting done on my shawl, with long icepack breaks between sessions.

I needed to know I could still do that. It went better than I had any expectation of while it let me fall in love with knitting all over again. The Matisse Blue is so pretty in person and the merino silk Malabrigo so soft that I never wanted to put it down.

They’ve had a good workout but there’s no tingling in the wrists: I think we’re okay here. In relief, onward!

The mango tree’s latest, to left and right, including that cluster of four that was almost upright yesterday and sideways today and already starting to swoop up again at the ends tonight, just doing what mango branches do. (For scale, those are tomato leaves in the background.)

So what I had expected to post about yesterday was that an old friend from back home showed me a picture of her toy raven for her team: she measured it 9″ beak to tail and asked if I might make it a Baltimore Ravens scarf so it could be properly attired. Maybe a half inch to an inch wide and a foot long?

Of course I would! (Oh if only all knitting requests could be that easy!)

I googled the colors and thought, bright gold and deep dark bright purple? Even with the size of my stash, do I have those at all? I wondered how long it would take to beg a yard or two from friends’ remnants because I was pretty sure I would need to. Or to buy them.

And then I found it: the bag that held what hadn’t been knitted up yet of the yarn that Melinda at Tess Designer Yarns had completely surprised me with a couple months ago. I wondered if she’d wondered why she was doing it, but she’d put in a half ounce each of worsted-weight soft wool in, you guessed it, exactly the shades of gold and purple I would later be looking for. Neither of us had any way to possibly know. I both laughed and looked at it a little bug-eyed–they were so exactly perfect. Wow. Thank you, Melinda!

The green tape measure had just verified that it was 12″ long, perfect, and I was halfway through that little bird’s quick bit of scarf and hoping to beat the mailman when the doorbell rang yesterday and I threw it down on the footrest to run go answer. This is the picture I took a few hours later after I came back from all that sudden whirlwind.

Kinda mango branch shaped there, isn’t it? 

And look at it now. A weekend ago it was shorter than the stake and all those groups of new leaves were each just one fingernail-sized dormant-looking bud at the branch ends. I suddenly have a lot more mango tree.

Meantime, I grabbed Michelle and treated her to chocolate at our favorite shop to share pictures from our trip and catch up a bit. We walked in and suddenly there were dairy-free truffles created on the spot just for her. In an allergic world where food in public can be a difficult thing, I love how good they are at making her at home.

Someday, when they’re not too busy (but I’m glad their shop is busy), I’ll ask the owners about the timing of tipping that top point. They’re the only people I know who once grew a mango tree.

Oh wait, of course! I take that back: Dani grew up with one. In India, though, so not the same climate. Still…

So we had a guy out to talk about our solar panels. His company was offering something that I don’t think existed when we installed ours: an inverter that separates out each panel, so that if one gets shaded the others still work.

Ours is an all-or-nothing system and there’s a redwood next door, so it was definitely worth getting a quote to replace that part.

When all that was done he was interested in asking about the fruit trees, and it being early evening I walked back out there with him and Richard. He wanted to know what everything was.

“A mango?!” He thought that was so cool.

Cherries, there and there, mandarins, there and there. “Peaches for June July August September,” I said, pointing one two three four, noting that the biggest was only planted in February but it was standard root stock vs the semi-dwarfs and also had better sun.

A few more steps, then, “That lemon tree looks so healthy,” he said, admiring how loaded its branches were with small green fruit. He reached up to touch one. “Meyers are sweeter, right?”

“Yes, they’ve got some tangerine in their parentage.”

“Wow, you guys could open a fruit stand with all that!”

Except… And then he told us about his plum tree, how the squirrels bit into his plums and then threw them down without finishing and made a huge mess he was having to clean up–with the implied thought of, and they don’t even leave me any.

We know how that goes.

It was clear he’d wished for more fruit trees if it weren’t for that. And we knew how that goes, too.

We were standing in front of my plum tree as he mentioned this and I pointed out the clamshells on the apple next to it and why. I told him about the raccoon that ate the plastic (no shards on the ground anywhere), ate the apple, and then never touched another clamshell again, not last year nor this nor any possible descendant of theirs. It had worked.

“Oh so that’s why…” (Yeah, I know they look pretty. Not. But hey it works!)

And over there… “I *love* figs!”

I told him mine was in a pot to keep the shallow roots from causing damage.

He was clearly eager to learn more. It was great fun. I think some nursery is about to make a sale.

Day three and many of the new branches are four inches long already.

It probably didn’t hurt that it was 92 degrees today.

I haven’t done any pruning at all because it came pre-pruned and two-limbed and in the first year of the mango tree I wanted it to concentrate on becoming solid and strong; I knew if I cut it it would trigger clusters of new branches from each spot. And I wanted it to be easy to cover at night for one more winter before I have to figure out something more elaborate to keep it warm.

At the tip of the one branch that gets just a tiny bit more sun than the rest it burst into four new ones anyway.

That means that, given how they produce, there will now be four times as many future mangoes there. I can manage quite happily with that.

My two limbs have become twelve (at least) all on their own.

It feels like putting yarn next to needles and coming back to find a sweater.

I put my knitting down and went out a moment…

And picked the first ripe Fuji apples of the season. There were three in this cluster, and yes I should have thinned them to one but I had so few this year that I just let them be for the most part.

The guy who’d helped me prune the thing back last winter cut off most of the fruiting wood. Other than asking him not to do that this year I really can’t complain because he did a fabulous job of shaping the tree, now that the weed eucalyptuses that had been shading it were gone, so that it recovered amazingly well and grew back towards the space they had taken over and it became a nicely shaped tree again. I did not know that was possible in a single season. But it meant passing up on most of a year’s crop.

Richard and I shared the biggest one and it reminded me why I chose that variety twenty-something years ago. Straight off the tree, they are fabulous.

They would have gotten redder had I taken their clamshells off and maybe trimmed back a few leaves and let more of the sun hit them directly, but they would have been gone in a minute. This year, for all the critters’ desperation in the drought, they have not been trying to steal fruit out of those covers. The birds did peck as best they could through the small air holes in the plastic but could only leave just the tiniest marks and that was that.

Bowl by my good friends Mel and Kris. Apples by sun, water (not too much!) and love.

Mango trees seem to have growth spurts like 13-year-olds. Maybe five days above a hundred degrees in the past week including today told it to grab summer while it could?

(The first photo shows the tree’s stake, not its trunk.)

After sitting there for over a month with no change that I could see other than a deepening of the green as the leaves matured and the daylight hours slowly decreased, this morning I looked out the window and clearly there was something new out there. I found that all but two of the branch ends had new leaves sprouting out where the day before there had been only a small, green, closed, pointed growth tip that I’d thought was in preparation for next spring.

The rest of the photos were taken this evening. The eighth branch has now popped out two leaves and will finish its circle tomorrow. (The red is a limb spacer.) Now only the lowest and most shaded branch is still in wait-and-see mode.

Look at all that! The center branch in the big photo sent out not only beginning leaves but four new branches producing those leaves. We have the word overnight in the language, but clearly we need its flip side: it happened overday!

Because, hey, they’re zucchinis, there was a new one this morning and a second by evening.

I scattered chili-oil suet crumbles all around the two: squirrel beware. (Edited to add in the morning, they got one anyway. The second was already 10 oz and it’s in my fridge now.)

Merino/silk, coming right up, meantime.

Tuesday was, as usual, watering day, as we hope hard for an end to the drought soon.

Wednesday, with the plants nice and plump and me away at my lupus group meeting, turned into steal-the-zucchinis day. And not just that: the squirrels tore open the stems of several leaves to get at any fluids they could. It’s been three days above 100 degrees in a row and I guess they’re desperate but I won’t have a plant if they keep that up. They did miss one last zucchini, and I would have given it one more day but I knew they wouldn’t so it’s safely in the fridge now.

I wasn’t letting them walk near my caged tomatoes after that. Which meant chasing them away a few times rather than letting them test my setup.

Probably because I hadn’t used the squirt gun, one large gray running down the fencetop highway this evening got to the edge of the property, turned around, walked quite deliberately back to its favorite spot up there and yelled at me.

Wait. That’s a squirrel sound? That’s way too low pitched. Can squirrels get hoarse? Seriously, can they?

The door was open and Richard was home and he opined that it had been a bird he’d heard. Too low for a squirrel.

Well, the sound was with it looking at me and stopped when I chased it away a second time and started up again when it came back to that same claimed spot and tried to give me what-all once again for interfering with its meal. Squirrel. Curious.

Oh and on a completely different note? I found myself driving behind a Tesla X today: DeLorean-type Gull wing doors, seven-seater SUV, and it seemed to actually have headroom enough for tall people. (Yo! Elon Musk! We need 6’8″ and 6’9″ers to be able to fit into your cars.) I didn’t even know these existed yet! Total fantasyland for us but that is one cool car. We got one of the first Priuses but we’ll have to pass on early-adopter status on this one.

Okay, do the click-and-drag on those doors. Do you see what I see? Wallace and Gromit? I’m dog-earing that page.

(Update 9/30: Turns out the X was actually released yesterday. What I saw must have been a company-owned car in pre-release.)