And now it’s the Gold Nugget mandarin that’s got one little flower blooming all over again to go with its dozen or so fruit that set some time ago.

And there is a beautiful little boy with thick blond hair who turned two today (correction: yesterday. I’m late here.) Hayes’s daddy shared a picture of him with a big mischievous grin on his face.

And of another back when, remembering…

The bramble coming over the fence: as much as I could pull up into view is gone now, and thank you all for the advice on what it was and what to do about it.

The yarn: Wink, a get-well gift from Karin of Periwinkle Sheep, set on one of my get-well afghans from six years ago.

I’ve mentioned previously that up till last August we had a whole line of weed eucalyptus trees sprouting profusely from a sucker running along the fence line. They grew to where they completely shaded the back half of the Fuji apple tree and then started to arch over the rest of it. The side that had been shadowed the most gradually became diseased and blackened, the leaves crumpling and falling off and the blotchy branches no longer growing. What was left looked so bad I was afraid it was going to spread and we were going to lose the whole tree.

I read up on apple diseases and the most hopeful thing said that simply solving the lack of light could give the tree a chance to recover and fight the disease off. The eucalpytuses had to go anyway for the sake of saving the fence (and they are ferociously flammable! You do not want eucalyptuses in California, even if they planted a lot of them in the 1800s) and so we did.

This is not quite a year later. In the foreground to the left is the edge of the Yellow Transparent apple and to the right the planted-this-year Black Jack fig. And then there is the big Fuji apple tree. All those branches on the right side of the main trunk are growing and green as of just this one year and it amazes me that it has gone from being very lopsided to what it looks like now. There was nothing alive in most of that area before. It recovered that fast.

All it needed was sunlight and a little looking out for it.

It’s going to need some pretty good pruning soon, and that’s a problem I didn’t think I would get to have.

The pattern continues: Tuesday is our allowed watering day and I discovered yet another volunteer that was not there the previous week. (We were already at fig tree, fig tree, tomato, and lettuce.) So much for this living in a desert idea. The squirrels seem to particularly like to tuck seeds near anything made of wood.

I actually thought I saw something else yesterday and went out to check near the mango tree, but it was just a weed: no grand discoveries on Mondays allowed–you have to wait a day. It’s the rule.

I did, however, find what I assume is a rose bush coming up over the fence from the neighbors a few days ago and I’m quite sure they have no idea it’s there. I’m curious to see what we get but not enough to let it climb my peach tree. Maybe I’ll train it along the top of the fence? It needs to prove itself before I put work into it, and soon, or it’s Get Back To Where You Once Belonged.

So the volunteer: did I really need another tomato plant, but hey, it’s mine now. That makes two of unknown variety. I should mention the random strawberries turned out to be wild strawberries like the delightful little ones of my childhood (I had to Google to see that they really do grow on this coast, too, the birds will be thrilled), and I just can’t quite make myself taste-test that lettuce. But you can’t go wrong with tomatoes.

Meantime, the water hit the paper towel around the most ripe of my big ones and of course it instantly showed the color beneath (don’t show the squirrels!)  To my surprise it was quite red already. I figured I was pushing my luck enough and beat them to it.

Monday it was a gray squirrel that leaped and did a faceplant into the birdnetting around the mandarin, bouncing back towards me in the middle of trying desperately to get away.

You could just see its brain: Oh… so *that’s* why the others stay far away from here!

Meantime, I got some Karin knitting done.

Took some friends some homegrown yellow cherry tomatoes after dinner, a pretty perfect little snack, and we all chatted for three hours.

Speaking of which.

The squirrels occasionally get past my attempts at barriers and raid those, sucking the juices and spitting out the rest because they don’t actually like tomatoes. There’s not been much loss because they don’t seem to go for seconds and the things were pretty small to begin with.

And plentiful. The Sungold is super-productive, so losing one or two of them a day isn’t a big deal. I also planted a big red type but as the Sungold branches spread out all around the other much slower plant, the one in the center grew a grand total of three fruits. Almost no blossoming.

But so I really want those three tomatoes once they’re ripe: all that water and anticipation for such a small payoff. They’d gone from green to greenish-white and clearly the red was coming soon and I was keeping a wary eye on the critters when I happened to mention this to my friend Robin at the beginning of the week. She told me to do something I’d never heard of before: take some white paper towels, soak them, and wrap one around each tomato. They will dry as white husks encasing and hiding them.

And they did! So far so good! (Do NOT peek during the daylight. They do watch and learn fast. But I’ve learned too.)

Paper towels. Wet white (no dyes seems a good idea) paper towels. I don’t know who thought of this, but clearly they were a (desperate) gardener. And a genius!

Well, there’s one vacation photo. This was coming back from the cabin, heading towards my parents’ Saturday afternoon.

Yesterday’s blossom find on the Yellow Transparent? Now there are ten apple flowers in three clusters and I’m going to be checking every day to see how many more show up. I’ve never heard of an apple tree producing two crops in one year before. So strange.

New mango leaves are purplish brown and narrow; they widen, lengthen, and start greening up slowly or within a few days, depending on warmth and light and time of year, clearly (I’m new at this). There had been no new leaves since April, and whether it was the flowering that made it stop awhile or the fact that I covered the tree for four days solid while we went off to our nephew’s wedding in early May to protect it from any last cold snaps I don’t know, but the thing just stopped and held its breath for six weeks and the leaves that had been purple then never did turn as dark green as the others.

Solstice seems to have finally kicked it back in gear with signs of new leaves, bringing it to this point by June 30. My vigorous tree was back! I was afraid I’d damaged it. It was quite the relief.

Monday when I saw it by daylight for the first time since leaving Thursday morning I did quite the double take: even the branches were noticeably longer–and not just at the sides, look at the new leaves popping up above the top now and at the center. I was going, wow, same tree?

And every branch means another flower cluster for next year. Grow little tree grow.

…Edited to add, I almost forgot the very funny Toronto’s memorial to a raccoon. As a city councilman said, May we all leave the lid on our green bins open tonight in its honor.

I need to show off my Indian Free peach tree just because I can’t believe how much it’s grown since I planted it Feb. 13.  Photo July 7. Not even five months. I guess the moral of the story is, if you want instant gratification buy a standard rather than a semi-dwarf. It will need more pruning, though. (Large clamshell, one peach.)

And the Black Jack fig, planted March 14. Fig roots being shallow and a potential problem, it will stay in a pot. I’ve never observed a fig tree growing before but I’m assuming those notches, some single, some twinned, mean there will be a few figs this fall. Again on the instant gratification. (Here those two are two months ago for comparison.)

And the thing that blew my mind–I was picking all the Yellow Transparent apples that were left; they got ripe or even more than ripe while I was gone and it was time to make sauce out of them. They are quite good for that.

There was a threesome of flowers. On the apple tree. In July. After the harvest. I have never seen such a thing before. The warm winter had spaced out the blooming time a lot, but still–all that finished months ago, and yet here they are. So strange.

Not that I mind having extras.

The next-door neighbors had a good-sized garden for years and who knows who all else is planting what.

And not just the humans.

It’s become a game: once a week, when I water the plants, I look closely around the mango tree in particular to see what the squirrels have growing next to it this week and every Tuesday I find something new. I think it’s the proximity to the compost pile that I know is somewhere on the other side of the fence and am guessing that that’s where by the occasional–

–side conversation: What do you call those pictures of an atom where the electron goes zipping around the center (motioning like a toddler trying to wind a niddy noddy). I mean the path it takes.

You mean the orbit?

THAT’s the word!

And then he goes into a detailed description of what electrons really do, not what their mug shot looks like. Okay, thanks, got my word there.

So, anyway, that kind of motion of bugs as seen from my side of the fence orbiting around that one area. The squirrels take it from there and then dig over here.

First it was strawberries, or at least, those couldn’t be any plant but strawberries that I know of but I’ll know for sure when they flower. (Hoping.)

Then it was a fig tree.

Then a week later another fig tree, with neither of those existing the week before. Not even a day’s overlap. The first I dug out oh so carefully and potted and it has thrived; the second I just yanked out, stuck it in a pot and told it sink or swim. It sank down into the dirt, then just at the moment I thought it beyond hope it rallied and now the darn thing is coming along fine. Which means I have to water it because I can’t kill it after rescuing it. Anyone local want a random-seedling fig tree?

Today, a little farther from the mango than those two were and far enough that I don’t have to pot it up this time to keep the roots far enough away, the volunteer of the week was a tomato plant. It wasn’t one of my tomato plants and it was not there last Tuesday at all (I’ve gotten to where I really look now), but it’s grown fast despite not having been watered for a week. The fact that it’s at the end of where I mulched and in the direction the water flowed to surely helped.

There was also what appears to be a new lettuce plant over by the cherry tree. Not that I’d eat it to see.

Nature seems clearly determined to make a real gardener out of me whether I want to or not.

It’s Tuesday, our allowed-watering day, so once again I moved the hose from tree to tree and from one side to the other, checking often while uprooting weeds most of the hour and a half, coming inside again when it was nearly completely dark: done at last.

Richard said, and not for the first time, how good it was to see me doing that. Seeing me being able to do that. He knew how much I enjoyed working outside; I knew what he also meant, with a good autoimmune scare having just eased away in the last few weeks. We know how lucky we are.

The fig tree is really taking off and I’m still holding out hopes of seeing a fruit or two this fall, which probably isn’t realistic, but hey. I want a taste.

I mentioned buying a pop tent for the Gold Nugget mandarin after seeing a squirrel combing through its leaves, sniffing and searching. But with that thing in place, having pingponged themselves off its birdnetting twice now they simply aren’t getting too near it at all.

Tonight for the first time in awhile I leaned over that tent and took a close look again at that mandarin. The new leaves are curled, pointing straight up, bitten and I’ve wondered how long it’s going to take for it to actually get established and thrive like our old lemon tree. At least it looks a whole lot better than the Page.

We actually have twenty-three growing little green mandarins (and one yellow one that will soon fall off) on that tiny bush for next spring and I had no idea. That tent came just in time.

Home grown mandarins. For real. I can’t wait!

And then there were peaches. Babcock, homegrown, and ours.

The bird spikes, the cinnamon-covered clamshells that made the whole thing smell like peach pie, the squeaky styrofoam to scare inquiring claws, the bubble wrap are all put away till next time. I had to unthread a handful of leaves that had grown through one slit in a clamshell.

All totally worth it.

Three of the seven peaches gone overnight, of course all the ripest ones. The remainders are even more barricaded in now.

There were some Costco grapes in the fridge we hadn’t quite finished off in time. Most looked mostly okay but it only took one mistake in that last smoothie to doom the rest. Putting them out in the bin though meant risking the sun time or waiting for evening–so they were still in the fridge.

Coming home from knit night I thought, well wait, we could use those after all. Going out by flashlight long after the diurnals out there had turned in for the night, they’re now a decoy in the center of the yard away from the fruit trees: no clamshells, no hassles, come and get’em. Eat your fill. Leave my peaches alone. (Go where the Great Horned owls can see you.)

You know they won’t still be there when the squirrels start to stir.

Suddenly thinking…hopefully that was not a mistake…we haven’t had midnight fights between the raccoon and the skunk so far this year like so many times last year. But if it works, hey, anything to save my Babcocks. Murphy’s law of course is surely rubbing its paws with glee.

Meantime, Sunday is solstice (not to mention Father’s Day), which means we usually see the hawk a lot and in the best years, his mate. It felt like it had been awhile. The ravens seem pretty much gone after fledging, with one lone caaah caaah overhead last night just to make sure I didn’t get too sure of myself on that one.

You called? This afternoon I looked up just in time to see the Cooper’s do a magnificent wide-wing swoop around the hanging suet cake right on the other side of the window from me, in no great hurry and with no one around to pursue, simply a statement that this territory was his and his alone.

A minute later I saw the scrub jay dart into a tree at the neighbor’s and the hawk diving in after.

A jay did show up awhile later but it had the sense to keep its distance.

Tonight: bird spikes in the branches and the base of the trunk, should have done it sooner, and another packet of grape Koolaid dribbled over and into the clamshells.

Our first taste of homegrown Babcock peaches. Three more weeks. Hang in (literally) there…

Last year a raccoon climbed my August Pride in the night and broke two thirds right off the top of that little tree, stripping side limbs off too on its way tumbling down. It still didn’t manage to get at the peach inside the fallen clamshell but it knocked the tree straight back to its bare root start. It was awful.

It’s growing back quite nicely. It’s half the height of the Tropic Snow peach and not the pruning job I would have done, that’s for sure, but I will have a better tree for it: there are and will be a lot more limbs closer to the ground because that’s all it had left to grow from and they will be easier to pick.

My middle peach, my Babcock, is the one that’s producing a lot this year. Clamshells, grape Koolaid, cinnamon sprinkling–I’ve been trying them all.

Plus one other thing: a big doubled-over length of bubble wrap tucked gently around its trunk like a shawl. Not taped nor tight; I want the wood to be able to breathe. But I also want mini airbag explosions at the claws and unfamiliar textures for that nocturnal climber who goes mostly by its whiskery sense of touch in the dark.

And it’s worked! One edge of the plastic got shredded at a bit, so I know it tried but it just couldn’t climb it nor over it. Pull at it and it pops back up.

And what really proved my No Trespassing sign had worked was the completely unexpected flash of orange under a cluster of leaves.

All this time and I had not seen that there was a seventh peach–untouched! The scrub jays have started pecking at the Yellow Transparent apples that aren’t enclosed (no Koolaid over there). But wow. An actual unprotected peach growing unseen and undisturbed all this time long enough to gain some coloring and somehow I had missed it. Well, as long as the critters did too, hey!

There’s of course now a clamshell with shipping tape strapped around it. Yellow becoming orange, faint red freckles at the top and a nice pointy bottom for now. Just hang in there a few more weeks…

So we bought this handy dandy tree limb trimmer thingummy with a telescoping handle a little while ago.

The camphor tree Chris’s crew trimmed back last summer now had watersprouts, long, gangly growths with poofs of leaves at the top–and those twiggy limbs are fragile and a hazard in a windstorm. But the unforgivable part is that they were starting to shade my mango, a mandarin, and a peach.

I worked at it some yesterday, waited for today’s path of the sun across the yard, went nope, not done, and I trimmed some more tonight, thinking, I’m getting better at this.

Um, except for that last one. There was a particularly ugly limb that was mostly over the neighbor’s yard, not too big, I could do that one, and I was sure I could grab the heavier end as it hit the fence and thus improve her view. Y’know, be a good neighbor and all that.

In practice, this is a little harder to do when you’re also holding a twelve-foot pole with a long curved knife with a mini-guillotine at its bottom–and I’m the one pulling the string around here, I’ve seen what those blades can do. Survival instinct got the better of the moment as it fell down her side.

Can’t just leave it there. Even if it’s not very big. I walked around the block to go knock on Mrs. M’s door to fess up and to offer to remove it from her property.

Only, it’s been fifteen years since I’ve been in her house. Paint jobs and landscaping changes have happened, and on her street I was going, now, wait, which one…

That one didn’t seem quite it maybe but the trees I could see beyond made it a possibility. And the lights were on (it was close to sundown), so, hey, I knocked.

There was the dad at the window, washing the dishes as his teenage son opened the door.

I managed not to say anything that would sound really stupid and old to a kid as I realized in astonishment, You’re the cute baby in the stroller while your dad was walking his dog every day!

I told the kid what I’d done, apologized, and said if it landed in their yard I’d be happy to go retrieve it. He chuckled and told me no problem, it was fine. I asked, partly to make sure they still lived there, Are the Ms next door? (And if you read the post in that link, this one is the follow-up: Adele got hers after all, our fourth peach.)

Yes they are.

The limb might have landed in their yard, I’m not sure, I told him.

Turned out the Ms weren’t home–and I don’t have a phone number for them.

And so I have yet again avoided having a conversation with Mrs. M about her large falling-apart Snoopy weathervane she impaled on our fence that, when it broke, she turned the broken side to face us.

It shades my August Pride from 1:30 to 3:30 pm and has been reducing its blooming. Which would delight her if I told her. Um. I was kind of hoping–scratch that, I was hoping a lot–that I could break the ice tonight: I had to talk to her, so starting the conversation, any conversation, would be a done deal. And I could make amends for dumping an unwanted thing on her side.

It’s not like this should be so hard.

(Edited to add in the morning, having written the problem out of my system: of course it’s not. I’ll go talk to her today.)

One hundred and six. When last week was in the 70s. Thank heavens we were able to add air conditioning to this house awhile ago.

Monday is not one of our allowed watering days but on the other hand we are allowed to hand-water on other days. Says the city’s website–but not the flyer they put in our utility bills. Don’t let the word out, I guess.

So I took a gallon of water over to the fig in the pot this evening because I wasn’t going to have that tree damaged for twelve hours’ sake. If I had to, I would have, but I didn’t have to. Sometimes the fine print is on our side.

I couldn’t help noticing…

One single week since I watered the peaches and apples and there were new weeds over in that part a foot wide and deep with runners hopping around madly. I went from zero plans to weed to an hour of putting my entire body against taproot after taproot after taproot, ripping random leaves when I flubbed it. Felt good.

Then I came in too tired to do anything but sit down and finish the very last of the previous knitting project so it could hold no guilt. Done. Karin’s blue merino and stella yarn was already wound and ready to go. And we’re off!