The squirrels still haven’t dared touch anything near any bubblewrap ten days after it first appeared outside so I added some to the upstart tomato plant today, given that there are several in there big enough for them to think about stealing.

It is December and for all the flowers on that September Surprise I don’t want my chances of tasting whatever variety it is and saving seeds to be any smaller than they have to be.

Meantime, I saw some photos online from Florida of individual mangoes hanging off the trees encased in produce clamshells and grinned, See? See? I’m not the only one who does that!

But dang. The squirrels in Florida like mangoes. Well, they don’t know a thing about them here–yet. My mother reminds me that they never touched the Page oranges in Maryland back in the day when the trucker dropped off all those cases in our carport when I was a teen, citrus wasn’t a food as far as those knew.

Re the Alphonso. The instructions that popped up after checkout last week said, Plant in a plastic pot with straight sides and keep out of the sun for 2-3 weeks while it acclimates to its new environment and to being out of that box after traveling by truck across the country all squished and in the dark. It will need to recuperate. Do *not* pull the tree out by the trunk to re-plant it into the ground; rather, pull or cut the pot away from the roots so as not to harm the tree.

Or words to that effect.

Me: hmm, how about that recycled-paper pot that demanded I buy it when we were at the hardware store a few weeks ago, before there even was a definite plan to buy a mango tree. And definitely before I knew I would need an in-between stage. We were there, buying stakes and a cover blanket for the Page orange and that out-of-season pot was sitting on a high shelf looking down at me, going, Well?

Well what?

Well it felt like the right thing. Richard asked me simply, Do you need it? and I said yes please, wondering why but going with the feeling (and it was going straight back up if the price was outlandish. Instead, I’ve seen packets of seeds that cost more.)

So he reached it down for me and so far it’s just been a holding spot for that anticipatory frost cover, unopened with the temps in the upper 50s at night. (Normal is 39.)

If we hadn’t bought it we’d be making a trip to go back to buy it. It’s too perfect. We’ll be able to plant the mango straight into it and then the whole thing straight into the ground in a few weeks. Under the awning, on the patio, right outside the window, the first little bit–I get to watch my birds trying out the strange new tree close up before it moves further out into the yard. (Note to Coopernicus: You Must Be This Small To Board This Ride.)

And as I was typing this I got an email from FedEx notifying me shipment has commenced, with the expected delivery date.

Which would be my birthday.

I like it.

(Oh, and, I knitted today, big surprise. Ho Ho Ho. Pictures? C’mon…)

A little more medical product testing today (the gizmos, not any drugs) which means I got to thank the good folks at that place: a few minutes there for my lifetime’s and my childrens’ and possibly grandchildrens’ lifetimes’ worth of the best mangoes out there. Quite the tradeoff.

Richard, on vacation, was having a grand time tinkering with gizmos and ideas towards keeping that tree warm when it gets here. Plumbing-warming coils going up the trunk? Here, he showed me, a thermostat with this and connected with that he could get…finally he grinned and let on that the old-Christmas-lights idea was actually quite a good one.

Whatever we do it’ll be because it was the best way to do it.

Went off to knit night and Juanita was there and it was so good to see her and everybody else. She pulled out her Schacht double-treadle, the wheel of my dreams (I have my plainer-jane Ashfords, sold to me used as a pair twenty years ago) and she starting spinning fleece into gold as I knitted and thought about how long it had been since I’d really put my Trad to major use.

I showed her my blue shoes that didn’t quite entirely match my outfit but they did match my project; I told her I’d found the way to get the thing done was not to have my clothes clash with my knitting. She laughed. And thought a moment. And went, yeah. Yeah, I can see that.

Another hour and a half and I think I’ll have this one Christmas present nailed and mailed; meantime, just in case, you never know, given how early her brothers came into the world, I checked my phone before I left Purlescence.

Nope. Not yet.

No hurry, little one. Take your time.

Almost as much rain in the last two days as all of last year. Flood advisories have been in effect.

And yet, when the sky held its breath a moment I did finally risk it and run an errand today. I could have waited a few days but it just felt like, go.

Which means I was in the right place at the right time to run into a woman I hadn’t seen in several years, a widow of my parents’ generation. “Marilyn?!” It did us both good.

When I pulled back into my driveway, there was–this is getting to be a daily occurrence–my Cooper’s hawk right overhead, free from any corvid harassment this time, simply seeing and being seen. Loved it.

Back to work. I wondered if I should join the ends of a scarf that came out a tad short and call it a double-over-able infinity scarf for a niece? It was a Stitches splurge two years ago and one skein was all there was or ever would be. (Handdyed cashmere, people.) I should ask Morgan what his youngest would think since it’s in her color. She’s old enough to take good care of it. (Handwash. Tepid water. No agitating around.)

Tomato plant: this is the one that sprouted three weeks into September that the squirrels planted. Now I just have to keep them from it so I can begin to guess what the variety is as it grows. December tomatoes! I guess I can’t complain about how it’s been 15 degrees warmer at night than the norm for weeks.

Anyone with any experience growing cherries, meantime: do you get individual flowers per each growth bud in that cluster of four or do you get clusters of flowers from each growth bud? I assume the single ones here and there will be next year’s new limbs.

Half the fun is watching and finding out but I wouldn’t mind flipping ahead in the book.

So FedEx said last week that my columnar apple tree was supposed to arrive tomorrow.

I happened to have someone here today who was digging the hole for me in preparation; schedules being what they are, this was when he could do it but I could hopefully handle it from there.

Yeah, and that’s what we did with the Page tree and I don’t think I mentioned here that I actually briefly knocked myself out cold doing that. One good push on the tip of the shovel to widen that hole and suddenly I was on the ground facing the other way, sprawled over it and scraped up with no idea how I’d gotten there. None. I still don’t know.

I was quietly not eager to do that again.

While the guy was digging the FedEx guy went past him and there was a thump at the door. And there was the Stark Bros box! My gardener took great pride in being able to put that thing in the ground himself and being a part of it after I told him why I’d ordered it, and so, it is done. (He works for the lady next door, too. He was very pleased that it was for her to be able to pick apples again.)

I thought about it tonight and impaled a piece of white paper at the top of it so that people wouldn’t walk into the little thing in the dark and the rain.

So much rain. Such needed, wonderful rain.

A little later I stepped out in the back yard for just a second–and heard the birds. Looked up in time to see the three of them passing directly overhead, and whether the two were crows or ravens I couldn’t tell from below.

But they were chasing my Cooper’s hawk out of my yard. They looked flimsy, he looked massive, but he was outnumbered.

He swooped up and into the redwood just across the fence; one veered off to I don’t know where but the other divebombed him again and again, daring him to strike out or take it, always threatening, never quite landing talon or beak on my bird. Who sat there and watched the show for awhile.

Finally, tiring of it, he took off but unfortunately in the general direction of yonder persimmon tree and suddenly we had the two of them hard after him again.

Go Coopernicus go!

And thing the third…

I had signed up to be notified. It had been several months and it was winter (albeit an unseasonably warm one here, even for California) and I wasn’t holding my breath, but this evening suddenly that notification came in: the seven-gallon size Alphonso mango trees were back in stock at Top Tropicals. I double-checked quickly with Richard.

This is the variety that the local ex-pats wait for cases of via the once-a-year plane from India, too fragile for supermarket distribution, picked that day and flown straight here. The one that Dani swooned over and told me passionately that if I didn’t plant one, “You will never know!”

And now we will.

I emailed him a thank you.

Almost immediately another Alphonso tree got sold and they were almost gone. Word was getting out.

Should have thought of this years ago.

Weird light reflections. A (very faint) smell Nature never made. The edges randomly flying up when a bird flutters down nearby and probably making a squeaky sound when they do.

Nothing has dared yet actually step on the stuff but I’ve seen some grand leaps sideways in avoidance.

We had been having so many squirrels of late.

Bubble wrap. That’s all it took. Just for a little while, while they re-learn some manners. I popped a bubble or two going by but resisted the impulse to squish them all–gotta leave some to do their job.

Maybe the peach clamshells next Spring could use an outer liner against raccoon prying–Christmas packages will be coming soon and let’s hope for no packing peanuts this year, I have other plans.

Meantime, we staked out the Page orange tonight and made it ready for a tarp come hint of frost. The weatherman says our nights are still eighteen degrees warmer than the norm but the fuzz and the fat on the squirrels and the layers of sweaters on me say that no, it really is getting chilly out there.

May tomorrow be warm with laughter and good folks and good times shared. Travel safely. Happy Thanksgiving!

If you have room for a pot, you have room for one of these new-variety trees, although you’re going to need two for pollination if there aren’t any other apple trees around–but aren’t those cool? Eighteen to twenty-four inches across fully grown, eight to ten feet tall.

Our next-door neighbor’s Gravenstein, a locally-famous old variety, died some time ago and she was lamenting to me the other day that she misses it still.

Between our properties there was once a towering but dying pine tree  just over on her side. We had been concerned it would fall and the direction it was most likely to fall was on our house. Taking it out, though–one guy knocked on my door wanting seven grand for the job. Gack.

Then came the time in ’03 when I was in the hospital trying not to die of my Crohn’s disease the first time. Our neighbor’s response when she found out was to want to do something: so she picked up the phone and got that monster tree cut down.

We like having that part of the front yard opened up. And yet… It’s been long enough that the pine roots are pretty much one with the soil now.

Twenty-four inches and straight-up growth. It won’t block our way, it won’t block her gate and outgrowing its space will never be an issue. We can put it just to our side of the property line and still have plenty of room, and Stark Bros tells me that my other apples on the far side of the property will be all it needs to produce.

These won’t be Gravensteins but they will be tart ones; I went for the Tangy Greens to keep the critters disinterested. I have friends in the area with a Granny Smith that their squirrels leave alone.

The tree ships out Monday and with Fall planting they say the roots may well make enough headway for it to start producing the first year.

We’ve already told her they are hers for the picking. Anytime.

And then I told her why.

I love love love my new toy. Persimmons way up high, perfectly in reach, 5’5″ of me and 12′ of it: put the prongs over the fruit, pull gently, un-extend the thing back down and roll the persimmon gently into the waiting bag.

Actually, it took me a few stabs on some of them to get the prongs on that thing just so around those leaves as I teetered around with that unwieldiness. Still. I love love love that I can reach things and it got easy fast.

And I now know that, unlike down below, there are some way up there where they get more sun that are already tree-ripened and perfect and one of those was the single best persimmon I have ever tasted. (As I wiped my hands on the grass, wished for a towel for my face, and laughed at how undignified Hachiyas are.)

And I also found out that those are an impromptu way to out-redhead Lucille Ball.

First, a side note to Peter and Terry if you should read this: my father would like to offer you written memories of Marcelline, if only he knew where to send them. If you leave a short hey I’m here in the comments section, your email address will come to me and I will pass it along but it will not show on this site. Thank you so much.

Meantime, hawk sightings nearly every day of late and quite the territorial displays. Glorious. The male flew in next to the window this afternoon and–well, he was saying something right at me, but you’d have to ask him. He seemed to wait for an answer but all I could offer was that I loved having him there.

The crows are staying well clear.

Speaking of which. There are neighbors with a tall old persimmon tree that bears heavily this time of year.

The last year or two, whoever had been helping them harvest didn’t and once the fruit was overripe and grossly sweet, every crow and raven in miles was going at it for several weeks, the whole tree one loud heaving mass of flapping black wings, and when that source was spent they went looking for more to claim in the near vicinity–and they drove out my Cooper’s hawks for a goodly while. Hunting doves is enough work without being constantly mobbed and stolen from.

So I confessed to the one neighbor that I’d had an ulterior motive in asking his wife if they needed help with the picking: I love Hachiya persimmons, and I wanted to thwart those corvids.

Boy were they with me on that one.

And so it was that near dusk today, with their strong encouragement (Please! All you want! Take it! Give lots to your friends!) I went in their back yard and picked a big bag’s worth and then walked from house to house, offering it out.

One took the whole bag. Cool, that works.  I started over.

I was amazed at how tiring picking and carrying the stuff around could be.

They will ripen (they’re almost there), I will puree, and I shall have frozen persimmon for whenever I need a fix out of season. As long as I don’t inflict them on my husband, we’re good.

Tomato plant pictures: the volunteer that’s a month old and a view of its new buds. Hoping to get Ellen in her much colder climate some quick-grows for next year from this thing.

And then there’s the heirloom variety still going after six months.

Meantime, yup, tried the cranberry juice, tried the vitamin C, but still woke up with a trip straight to the doctor. Thankfully there are still some antibiotics that have not yet been made useless by the unethical feedlot practices of the big bioag producers, and so I am no longer passing blood.

Never mind all that–I was just sick enough to put my feet up and get some serious knitting time in and I’m delighted at how much I got done.  The 45×60″ I want while using size 4s is a very long slog but I can actually tell the difference from yesterday. (Pass the icepacks.)

So of course I forgot to take its picture, but. I just thumbed through the blog a bit–it was only a month ago? Huh. That surprise tomato that the squirrels planted by the cherry tree has buds already.  At one month old. I’d love to save the seeds from that one. The way the heat keeps on coming here this year, we might actually get that crop.

Met up with the new knitters tonight as planned and they’re coming along, too. It was fun to see.

(Just updated Saturday’s post with a new photo that does much better justice to Debbie’s socks.)

As I look through the fall nursery offerings…

A hawk sighting today. A smattering–I like that word, it sounds just like it and it lasted only slightly longer than saying it–of rain.

And a viral video about the way to open a pomegranate.

Actually, we had one waiting to be tackled. Now, I did not know till sampling a grower’s wares at a show last year and looking up the trees later that there are all kinds of pomegranates: there are the sour puckery ones and there’s a variety that is just plain sweet sweet sweet and there’s a range in between. That grower had dark-juiced sweet ones and her products were a revelation. Good stuff.

And the fruit comes in such nice squirrelproof containers! (I may be kidding myself on the sweet ones but the critters do leave whatever my neighbor’s variety is alone.)

So I tried what the video said: you cut off the top jack-o-lantern style and then down the white lines that separate sections of seeds. Pull them down, pluck out the whites, and tadaah!

Lemme tell ya, hon, it ain’t that easy.

But then I wasn’t going to eat mine corn on the cob style anyway. There’s this small issue of my not being able to eat the seeds, just the juice, but I’d read that you just throw them in a blender or cuisinart and then strain away the solids.

Uh…

The timer on the oven was going. The white lines went straight down only halfway and then sideways into randomness. Trying to pry all those little arils out of there, I went past ten minutes with the thing and thwacking the fruit on the counter beforehand hadn’t loosened them away any. I have no way to know how ripe it had been allowed to get or whether that factored in.

Don’t forget the apron I forgot.

Plate, cuisinart, strainer, bowl: half a dishwasher load, while cleaning pomegranate squirts off my sweater and trying to thwack all that grit out of the strainer into the trash.

I got about a third, maybe a half a cup of juice. I said to Richard, (wondering what companion I might plant to go with my Stella) “Pitting cherries is a whole lot less work.”

Dozens of those at a time? A hundred? A tad reluctantly, but, I think we can scratch pomegranate trees off my list. Skylake won’t mind doing the work.

Last night was the first night I slept since this started, just a few coughing spells. Today was the first day I was able to eat without having to use anti-nausea meds to make it possible. That’s real progress.

And I wound up the next ball of purple yarn for my project. I almost did it last night but thought, do you want to blow all your energy standing winding for twenty minutes and then be worse tomorrow because you’re already that tired, or do you want to wait till it’s easier so it gets done *and* you still feel well? I waited and today it was no problem. Wow what a difference.

Getting tomatoes out of those boxy cages is a real pain–and the guy who comes twice a month to do some of the outside yardwork that I can’t saw me coughing just before I headed back to bed to read awhile, not talking to him because I didn’t want to share the germs. Richard was working from home: another sign I was sick. The guy saw that things hadn’t been weeded for at least a week and there were now tomato branches growing through and blooming well outside the bird netting.

He got that one ripe heirloom tomato out of there for me and put it where we couldn’t miss seeing it the next time we looked out the window. Nobody had asked him to. He just did it. I got up soon after he and his partner working next door left, too late to say thank you or even to be sure which one of them had done it.

Looking forward to tomorrow. I like this getting-better stuff.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings I was not home to do my usual watering but for just long enough to keep the pots of tomato plants going and I was off.

There was a one-plant surprise party for me Monday way across the yard over next to the cherry tree: having weeded there last Wednesday, I know it wasn’t there then.

Okay, then, squirrels do bury food for the winter, but squirrels don’t even like tomatoes–they just steal the juices out and toss the rest.

Curious little mystery. It’s a vigorous little grower, maybe we’ll even get a harvest out of it.

Meantime, thinking about yesterday’s post some more, I realized that I have no idea what time my car actually got done and my showing up to ask might have been right as they finished. In my hurry to finish the post and call it a night I neglected to mention that the mechanic had asked me for my cell number so he could tell me when it was done.

I explained the hearing impairment (I’d forgotten my bluetooth pendant to my Iphone) and that in that noisy store, I would never hear it ring; I asked if it would be possible to text instead?

He thought about that for a nanosecond and decided, with no question in his voice, a firm Yes. He added quickly that it would be from his personal phone, not the store’s (I’m sure so that I would get it despite its being an unfamiliar number.)

Now, we have a cell plan with unlimited free texting, which they don’t offer anymore; we’re grandfathered in, along with two of our kids and my parents. This guy probably pays by the text and he was willing to offer that out of his own personal pocket to a customer. He didn’t have to do that–and in the moment that he did, there was a certain joy in his face in the offering.

They’ve got a good guy there.

I got two notes back from Costco customer service this evening. The first was an automated, we don’t answer after hours but we will get back to you tomorrow.

The second, sent soon after by someone who had read it anyway and clearly had felt compelled to answer, was a note thanking me and saying they would forward my email to the manager so that Luis could get the recognition he deserved.

And now I was the one who was smiling. May that little moment he created not be buried but come to full fruition for him.

There is a gap (still) in the six foot tall fence where the neighbors have been rebuilding it after taking out the last of the damaged old part there after our tree guys got done.

The framework is in place, a few beams have gone in, but the husband wanted to do the job himself, not hire some young’un, and he’s taking his sweet time.

They were married in 1956, she told me tonight.

Her longterm memory is still sharp for the most part.

I was watering my plants and saw them at the gap and stepped over their way. Very soon it was her and me chatting away, just the two of us, swapping stories as I moved the hose from time to time and marveling at how trees, like kids, grow up and blossom and bring forth after all this time. Well, some of them; I had her step over to my side to continue the conversation as I watered the pear tree over thataway–that one was still just a baby.

I showed her where it had been pruned to when we’d bought it in February vs where it is now–it’s more than doubled its height already. And when her husband had found out that their bush was shading it part of the day, he got that bush cut back to the fencetop just because. When I thanked him tonight he shrugged off all credit with a grin and a disclaimer of, “The gardener did that.”

(Yes, the gardener had trimmed a little last week, I’d thanked them for the extra sunlight, and he’d clearly sent the guy back to do more.)

This time she was able to process my stories as well as tell her own, and the thing not forgotten yet, she could ask a question or two of me at the end. That’s not always been quite so true of late but tonight it was and we were laughing and swapping and telling the punch line to the next tale and laughing some more and if any other neighbors were outside hearing us they were wishing they were having as good a time as we were.

It’s brought out the best in her.

Half a dozen times, as she always does, never remembering that she’d already said the very same words, she told me, “You know. This is so lovely. You know what we could do? We should put a gate between our yards so we could just step across and visit anytime,” motioning with her hands from existing pole to imaginary one the width it would have to be. It wouldn’t have to be big; we could squeeze through sideways–and she laughed at that mental image every time. “Our own little Narnia door,” I said. (She drew a blank and then forgot it before she could ask, that time.)

At last she said, “Have you eaten?”

It was nearly eight and I had an hour before. She had not yet, she said, and it was getting dark and a bit chilly; time for her to go in. Said with cheerful reluctance.

I stepped back to my side of the fence. We swapped one last story each. I reiterated that she was always welcome to walk around the block via the street come the day to just knock on my door anytime.

And then she went back inside to her patient husband, whose sociable and endearing wife had been entertained for awhile while he had gotten a break.

There is no rush to finish off that fence, the last part to be repaired between our yards, none at all–not on my side, and I don’t think on theirs.

Breakfast was fruit and homemade lemon curd and waffles and maple syrup at Michelle’s; dinner, lasagna here.

But before any noodle anything, the important part: Parker wanted to pick an apple again. Never mind that they could use another two weeks, the Fujis are good enough now since they needed to be and so we went over to the tree.

(While the spade got put on the lowest limb of the big camphor tree–give him another year or two before he’ll be trying to climb up there. My baby Page tree needs its roots, honey.)

I didn’t have the scissors with me so it took a moment to get the tape out of the way and I managed to take a few leaves off getting that clamshell disentangled from the limb.

Parker pounced on it as it fell and examined every inch of the insides: no apple! How…?

It was still on the tree. I pointed it out and since it was, as the phrase goes, low-hanging fruit, he got to pick it all by himself.

Hudson, meantime, approved of the rocking chair.

And I can just picture some future visit when Parker is not going to get to pick an apple because it’s the wrong season. Hopefully there will then be something else ready for him, Meyer lemons if nothing else because there’s always one of those hanging around. Mind the thorns, though.

And a good day was had by all.

I dunno about them but I for one am sure going to sleep well tonight. Zzzzzzzzz…