1. So then I tried spinning just the plum and the red sparkly today and got these 272 four-plied yards.

2. The tart cherries are trying to catch up to that color as fast as they can. You can tell which side the sun hits them on.

3. This video of Glenn Stewart rock-climbing city hall and banding baby peregrines.

4. It was the last Thursday night knit night at Purlescence: attendance has been low of late (all those political debates on Thursdays, I’d say) and they really did need the extra space for classes. So of course it was quite the turnout tonight. I’m so glad I got to go (thank you, Richard) especially given that I’m not driving yet.

5. Meantime, we got the very happiest of messages: Crystal, our seven-weeks-premature new grand-niece, after a month in the NICU was pronounced healthy and allowed to go home today. Her parents are ecstatic. We are, too.

I was thinning the Fuji apple tree–a task I have never had to do before, but this year for the first time the tree is loaded–when I learned that a cluster is more connected within itself than to the tree, so instead of reducing three to one I suddenly had none of those particular ones for September.

Oops.

The tiny ones at the bottom are from the year-old columnar apple, which started off with nearly as many apples as leaves. I figure one for us, one for the neighbor, one for backup and that’s plenty for the little thing to have to do for now.

Meantime, with all the yarns I’ve plied on my wheel of late, still this silk leaped out of my stash and onto the needles for now. I figure it has its reasons.

A Dancing Queen and a Red Lion amaryllis that my dad gave me for my birthday several years ago.

And if you look way in the background, that’s my Baby Crawford peach that I planted in January in front of the fence and the third-year Stella cherry at the far left.

It’s the most amazing thing. You gouge a little hole out of the dirt, plunk in a stick, cover it up and it turns into fruit all on its own, for years and years and years to come. Well, not the amaryllises but they earn their keep, too.

And on a side note, just because it tickles me. The Grammy Salute to Music Legends that just happened: my cousin David, a musician and actor in NYC, just flew to LA along with his almost-95-year-old dad to accept a Grammy award on behalf of David’s late grandfather, Harvey Fletcher. The inventor of stereophonic sound, not to mention the first audiometer (I’ve seen it, it’s at Johns Hopkins, built into a gorgeous wood case) and hearing aids. For what he did for the world of music.

I love that my uncle got to be there and accept that. Rock on!

It caught my eye and I went looking for the seeds. From the San Jose Mercury News last summer:

“Sharlyn melon
Tips: One of the most difficult summer melons to grow, it’s also one of the most expensive. A perfect Sharlyn will melt in your mouth like cotton candy.”

And that is why two Sharlyn seedlings went into the ground today, surrounded by Wool Pellets (the little brown raw-wooly stuff around there) to keep the snails away, hold water in the ground, do a little fertilizing and all the other good stuff they said but the best reason I can say right now is how fast a squirrel made an about-face when he got close enough to get a whiff. Highly gratifying.

The English Morello cherry was growing through its 36″ tent pretty badly and I was impatiently waiting on the arrival of a bigger one. Seeing leaves on the outside the old may be why a squirrel took a flying leap at it today, only to be bounced back instantly to where it had jumped from–that thing was pretty taut. Trampoline!

The new one came today. Carefully taking off the old NuVue, it was a little startling how much bigger the tree instantly was. It really had gotten squished in there, it wasn’t just my imagination. Photo is of the tree inside the new, with a frost cover around the bottom till I go buy more stakes–it needs them.

The Gold Nugget mandarin, having doubled in height since January, is also quickly outgrowing its 36″er. When the cherries are picked I’ll move the new big tent over it.

Meantime, we just had a hot week and the buds on the mango have finally, finally started to swell. If I could bottle the perfume we’re about to get I could make quite the fortune. Heavenly.

Somehow, “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” instantly sprang to mind.

She was tucked in and snoozing before I pointed my phone at her. Given that a mourning dove will drop a small twig and call it a day on the nest building, I was wondering a moment there if we were going to have an egg roll. Or egg drop soup, anyway.

And yes, the mandarin’s tent is inside a cage these days after a raccoon pushed in one side but couldn’t get through.

Almost ripe.

That little stick of a columnar apple that I plunked a branch with a few flowers from another variety in water next to because it needed a pollinator and the other trees were on the far side of the house?

Fifteen baby apples I counted on that thing today, and the last buds at the bottom have only just opened. Clearly it worked. (Thank you bees.) If I thin them to one per cluster is that enough? There just isn’t much to the little yearling yet–but it definitely wants to be what it was planted for.

I discovered and ordered some of this today: sheep belly wool and back tags, the trash of a shearing, compressed into gardening wonderfulness: it aerates, it absorbs water and it releases it slowly while at the same time fertilizing. “Repeals snails and slugs” I assume meant repels them. Typed the woman who found a snail INSIDE A CLAMSHELL! ogling the peach at the upper end today. The peach lived, the snail died on the spot. How did it get IN there?! How do I not let that happen again?

So, sold. Price included shipping, though they didn’t say it would.

Meantime, our friend and second cousin Jim called to ask the great favor of my mending a favorite sweater of his, something I’ve done before.

What color? I asked, so that I could start digging for various navy yarns before he got here.

He admitted to being within a minute of the house.

Sure, c’mon by!

As he started to approach the door I cautioned him to walk slowly: there were birds nesting in the azaleas, and sure enough, as he came four Bewick’s wrens dashed out to the tree overhanging the fence.

Usually it’s California Towhees in there in the spring. This year it’s my favorite wrens. Two pairs.

I didn’t want procrastination nor my lack of mobility to get in the way so we struck a deal: he was on his way by to run an errand? Cool, run the errand. Stop by here on your way back. Looking at the size of the hole, I added a warning, It’s going to show. He said that was fine, he just didn’t want the stitches to run.

I found just the right navy quickly after he left but the new stitches did show some. One could pretend the manufacturer goofed when it sewed the label on given where the hole had been.

He came back, thanked me, and I smiled, saying, glad to do it and glad I had just the yarn and hey, anytime.

Jim walked (carefully) back down the walkway–and suddenly I found myself calling after him, with a sudden catch in my throat I hadn’t expected nor wanted: Jim? Thank you. (I explained the sentence to couch rest and the concussion.) It felt wonderful to be able to do something for someone–I’d needed that. Thank you.

My English Morello cherry at the end of last summer and in today’s rain. Compare to Wednesday’s photo. That’s not camera angles, it really has grown that much in three days.

All that and cherries, too.

Over at San Jose City Hall, the peregrine falcons had four eggs. Two hatched, and as nothing happened and nothing happened the parents started to push one and then the other remaining egg away.

And then pulled them back towards them after awhile.

And pushed again. One was a maybe? It just seemed that the two that were out were it.

Six days after the first hatching, one of those two semi-rejected eggs started showing a line of white (you can see it at the 2:20 mark)–and then poof, all at once (at about 4:38), there it is! Its siblings are older and more able to be aggressive at getting food from their parents but this one just might prove to be a survivor after all.

Pretty please with cherries on top.

Last year, after all this went on, you could count every individual beleaguered leaf from afar. (Speaking of which, that’s just a bit of cinnamon to get rid of some ants. No yellowing.)

In a few weeks this tree has grown from having plenty of space under its tent to being right at the bird netting on all sides and at this rate I’ll have to buy a bigger tent to protect the growing cherries.

Some problems are cause for celebration.

Oh and? I got an email from someone saying his twin daughters (they’re nine or ten) had knitted all through Conference and by chance might I have any leftover yarn? Because they were out.

I asked the dad what their favorite colors were. He got right back to me.

You know that if you want knitting to be the lifelong love it could well become for them you’ve got to give them the good stuff. Some soft acrylic, yes (take it all!) but also some cashmere blend and an angora/merino blend (an out-of-stock bright light lime green, a color they’d hoped for), washed and hanked from cones. I told the dad how to wash the natural-fiber stuff and warned the girls gently that a lot of people are allergic to angora and it’s okay if you find out you are, but I think you’ll love it (and boy did they). The fur combed from a shedding rabbit. It is nice stuff.

(It also happens to give one of my kids hives.)

They were so excited. They so much said thank you. And I couldn’t possibly have enjoyed those yarns better any other way. Can you just picture all the people those two are going to make happy over the years to come?

(Photo taken before flowering stage. Spikes on this one.)

What the smell of rain is. Fascinating stuff.

I finally found the correct name for the weed I’ve been yanking out for weeks: storkbill. It’s a biennial in our climate, not the perennial I’d thought all this time–all those hundreds of taproots I’ve yanked out made no real difference. And yet, it is so satisfying to hear that weed riiiiip all the way out of there, gone.

Of late the plants were getting a tacky feeling to them and the Smithsonian article explains why, and why that disappears after a rain: they produce an oil under dry conditions that inhibits seed germination, which, here, would definitely be a survival mechanism for the next generation waiting for the next winter’s downpours.

Storkbill would be a marvelous ground cover, given how fast it spreads on runners and those pretty tiny purple flowers–but the spikes! All those long vicious spikes. If someone somehow bred those out of there I would replace my lawn with them. Except, wait, they’re a favorite food of harvester ants.

Out!

There was a hummingbird dancing around my sour cherry blossoms. And then another hummer in the apple flowers, resting and eating at the same time: sometimes it hovered above a blossom but about half the time it could just perch there holding still and reach right in and drink, given the thick woody spurs the short flowers grew from, and so it did, as if it were enjoying some exotic resort on vacation. Pass the Martinelli’s.

I needed to go out and water the fruit trees for the first time this year. It made it feel like summer already.

At the base of the little trunk, those are crushed brown eggshells to add calcium to the soil over time and because the slugs and snails can’t climb over them to strip the blossoms. Which they absolutely would do.

I finally thought to bend down to see if my newest apple’s flowers had any scent to them.

Like a gardenia. Ohmygoodness. How did I miss out on this before. Dainty and demure and needing to be sought out but when you did, what a reward, sweeter even than those on the Fuji.

My neighbor whom I’d planted it for happened to arrive home just then and I called over to her and exclaimed over the flowers with her.

She’d almost missed noticing them. She was as thrilled as I was. Have I mentioned I really like having her next door?

In the back yard: the irises nearly died of the drought but seem to be trying to make up for it now. They came with the house and have ebbed and flowed with the weather patterns over the years.

I haven’t seen them blooming like this in a long time, with more to come.

Writing this, I suddenly realize I didn’t bend down to see if they, too, have any scent–but then they’re not the novelty the columnar apple is so if there were, you’d think I would know by now.

And me, I went looking–again–through the stash for yarn for a hat that a preemie in the NICU could wear. Came up empty again…almost. Maybe…but I would think that adding color, rather than adding to the endless white there would be the thing. And it absolutely has to be washable. I wistfully held a ball of pulverized pearl/bamboo blend the color of those irises, so soft, so (and she needs this) warm, discontinued (because it was too expensive to produce) and thus a rare gem for the perfect little girl I wanted to knit it for.

But so needing delicate hand washing, which just wasn’t going to happen in the hospital.

I’ll keep looking.

I would think red would attract attention where you really wouldn’t want it.

On the other hand, those petal pieces would be soft and thicker and maybe stronger than a lot of types of leaves. Definitely gentler to the touch than the coir bits the Bewick’s wren has been wrestling off the seed pots. Maybe they’re at different stages of construction?

At first she just flew to the stalk several times throughout the day. Almost, almost–not ready. She really got going when the threesome of amaryllis buds turned red at the top of that stalk. I marveled that they could support the chickadee’s weight and when the first two flowers finally started to open today, I thought, that’s it, she can’t possibly perch on that. A single curving petal?

Try to stop me!

(No, no, enjoy!)

She was tearing off bigger pieces at the top now. Some of my friend Kathy’s dog’s fur from last year sat below, waiting to be claimed, but this tiny chestnut-backed, the smallest of all the chickadee types, wanted her babies cushioned by my favorite flowers. I tried quite a few times to photograph her at it but she’s not one to sit around and wait for me. There are nestlings to get ready for!

The Tangy Green Columnar from two angles. Most apples don’t need a pollinator but it does, and so the Yellow Transparent gave up a twig with the same stages of blooming this evening.

Meantime, in politics…

Time Magazine did a photo shoot with the Republican candidate (his unmentionable name deleted) with a Bald Eagle for their cover–it was only later that they released the footage of the eagle starting to attack him as he rears back and away. (Scroll down slightly to the GIF to skip the ad in the video.)

A video that’s a lot more fun: in the middle of a large campaign rally today, a Pine Siskin flies to Bernie Sanders’ “A future to believe in” sign and, resting on that perch, turns its head to get a good look at the candidate. At 56 seconds in, it flies  towards Bernie himself before veering upwards in no particular hurry, not having minded the sounds of the crowd in any of this. (And I have seen how they zoom away when a hawk arrives. That one was not afraid.)

I love Bernie’s delight as he stops right there to take in and appreciate what life has suddenly brought him, his laugh for the sheer joy of it.

I was pulling weeds tonight just a few feet from the patio when an Oregon junco flew in beside me. A Bewick’s wren came from the other direction and joined in.

Wild things know.

See that iris in the background? This is the first time it’s bloomed in several years. We really did get a lot more rain this winter.

Dark pink buds: the Tangy Green Columnar I planted a year ago. Since I don’t really expect the bees to zip around the house to get to it from the other apples like it needs, as soon as they open I’ll snip a flowering branch from the old Yellow Transparent and put it in a glass of water next to it.

Meantime, the English Morello tart cherry continues to open up. It, too, is not quite three feet high. Someday, someday, it will be tall enough to offer cherries to the neighbors across the fence.

The knitting. Hmm. No, if I say a single word it’ll give it away–so yeah. Later.

Meantime, the first Indian Free flower opened Feb. 23; at March 20 and after all those rains that tree is still blooming, although these last blossoms have no counterparts left on the other peaches for pollination. Such a pretty tree. So very glad I planted it. (Lemons and clamshell-protected peaches in the background.)

And the tart cherry–I counted in the neighborhood of a hundred buds today on that tiny tree.

The Cooper’s hawk swooped overhead while I was outside taking these pictures but I didn’t quite get him in any of them.