I was knitting in the waiting room today. My choices included kidney stone, kidney cancer, or an infection that would respond to antibiotics within four hours.

Yes please on the latter.

Thank you lab work. One dose down and just like they promised, it’s already starting to kick in. Sweet success.

Meantime, we hit 32 degrees last night and it was 43 under the mango cover–just above the limit of 40F where the inflorescences (flowering sets) die, not that there were any of those to worry about but one wants no cold spots.

Oh wait. While I was sick this past week–

–looks great to me!

(Views are from one side of the trunk and the other. Future leaves and branch in this one, inflorescence in the second view: we could actually get mangoes this year.)

(And then I go to…) Huh. My iPhone isn’t sending photos for some reason, even after I just deleted a hundred or two and I have no idea why. Anybody?

Well, anyway, trust me, the cluster of buds, it’s there.

And I might actually get that monster 250g worth of merino/silk hat finished while the weather’s being terrible in other places.

Edited to add, Richard to the rescue!

Our neighbors thanked us for the extra sunlight for their garden after the tree cutting last summer.

A week ago, I was weeding and found one plant that was different and was amused that it looked like a carrot top as I yanked it out. I was standing on my side of the fence from that garden.

Oh wait. Look at that size 00000 orange thumb needle under there. Who knew.

Today I went out and near that same spot, it looks to me like a strawberry plant (and I know they grow strawberries.) Think I’ll keep this one awhile and see what it does.

First peach flower of the year. I wish I could send a whole armful to New England. (Don’t miss that second video down on the Washington Post site…)

Not quite a snowbank of them yet.

Two days till Stitches!

Before and after. Kind of horrifying but you have to do it or you get a weak misshapen tree that won’t produce well. Cut off the top at planting, the videos from the growers said, down to three to four feet, max. Leave three to five branches for scaffolding. If there’s one that twists back on itself, cut it off. You want to create a vase shape over time so that sunlight can reach the inner center to make all the fruit sweet and you want a wider angle coming from the trunk than straight upright to make for stronger branches to bear their future load–watch those angles and choose the best, spaced around the tree. Trim.

Yeah, you see the wishful thinking in those red spacers? The first photo was taken Saturday. It took me awhile to work up the courage.

This morning I managed to make myself cut them down to six. Good thing the tree is still dormant, because I think I’m not quite done yet. There is just such a twirly twig, but it’s clear it was reaching in the direction the light was most dominant where it came from and since snapping this picture I’ve been able to mostly straighten it with another spacer–and it’s growing in the direction I want.

But it’s flimsy compared to the others. It has not yet convinced me it gets to stay. (Edited to add Wednesday morning, it’s gone now.)

I managed with great effort to cut the top off, as one is supposed to do, but the cut edge was sloppy, going down and then back up again like a check mark. It was misting out as a reminder that everything I’ve read or watched says take it at an angle so that water can’t collect on the healing cut.

Richard hadn’t left for work yet so he went out there for me and did a better job of it. But that is one good sturdy tree and it’s going to grow just fine, and in a place where it has space to spread nice and wide, unlike my smaller semi-dwarfs along the other fence.

This Indian Free peach is for my neighbor. The one with early dementia whom I had so many good long chats with last summer while there was an opening between our yards while her husband was gradually replacing the fence (I want to have that kind of energy when I’m his age) sawing the lumber on his back patio and putting the boards up a few at a time, day by day. She wished I had planted one of those peach trees near enough to grow over to their side when all this was done. And she would pick’em, too, if they did! she grinned mischievously.

And now I have. The best-tasting peach there is, according to the grower, one that does not get peach leaf curl disease, one that will thrive and grow and create bonds between neighbors long after she and I are both gone. It is planted close enough to spread a bit over the top there and yet far enough away that if some future neighbor halts it at the fence line it will do just fine with that, too.

She’ll never remember wishing for those peaches nor how many times she’d said those same words. But I do.

And so these last few months I kept coming back to the thought of her sitting beneath peach blossoms, inhaling the essence of spring and of love and finding a place to feel centered come what may. Of her picking ripe or even not-yet-ripe fruit as it makes her happy.

Of offering both her and her husband a place of peace.

And so I tracked down that variety and I drove over that mountain and with my husband cheering me on, I dug out as many old roots as I could and at last I planted her her peach.

Who knew, who could possibly have known, that it would feel so joyful. I mean. Wow.

The outer pot is the one the pear tree’s roots were cut out of, and with no soil in it I’m using it to keep the Page’s from growing through the paper pot to the ground.

So. We dug the Page up and put it in there to recover from its too-dark-in-winter location (oops) that it was losing its leaves over. It needs a good year of recovery because citrus, being evergreen, especially dwarf citrus, produce new leaves slowly.

Not that that’s stopping it.

It wants to do what it wants to do. I stopped counting at 83 flower buds. Sometimes even if you can’t make it right away, for creativity’s sake you just gotta have your stash on hand. (Still. I’m pruning those off when they get a little bigger.)

After yesterday’s 82 degrees, the first two peach buds of the season swelled and turned pink on the August Pride today.

We have the sweet, sweet sound of the dishwasher doing its second load. The part was the right part. The repair worked. And it didn’t die after one round like last week. Would I go to that parts place again in that sketchy part of town where the owner had to unlock the door to let me in, um, probably not. (The guy in Fremont hadn’t had it.) But we don’t have to shell out yet another hundred-forty for the motherboard after all and that is a huge relief.

Coopernicus (pictures of him here) did a swoop around the patio and together we got to see him with wings and tail stretched wide right on the other side of the window. Gorgeous. A birdwatching trip from the comforts of home.

I did a quick run this evening to the local Trader Joe’s to buy a favorite thing for my favorite man.

Frozen green figs. Who ever thought you’d find… Well okay so I got that too.

Going to my car, there was a man sitting in his next to mine, waiting, lights on. Clearly his wife too had run in for just one thing and was being distracted by all the finds one finds in that store.

And facing the rear in the car seat in the back was a very little girl.

Her mommy had left. She couldn’t see her daddy. Bedtime was bearing down on her too and she looked like a baby who wasn’t quite crying yet, but it was sure coming.

I smiled my best grandma smile and waved hi at her.

She stared.

I waved and smiled again and put my fresh-pressed apple juice in the car. I’d bought four. It was going to be a squeeze in that fridge but my Richard likes theirs better than anyone else’s.

She looked like she might be okay with being here after all.

The man rolled down her window and I told him, Cute baby!

But what he’d wanted was for me to hear: “Bye!”

“Bye!”

“Bye!”

“Bye!”

We waved and bye’d at each other a few more times, the world a friendly place for a child too small to have more than a word or maybe two that she could reliably express yet, but by golly she got to put it to great use and she made my day.

At the last, I changed it on her to a double-word sentence of “Bye bye!” and reluctantly pulled my car out of that spot, time to go.

She made Richard happy too when I got home and told him about her.

I just looked at the remote-read on the thermometer under the mango tree. Forty-six and heading down. Time to turn on the Christmas lights to keep it warm and safe for the night.

It’s been a good day.

I’m so tired let’s see if I can proofread this right. Happy tired.

Their goofs meant I totally won. Not enough other people could find them, I think.

We had this one spot behind the plum tree that was a perfect space, now that the weed trees were gone, for another, specifically a bigger tree than some of the others I’ve put in. Not being in a raised bed meant that much more allowable height, and it likely wouldn’t shade the solar there even if it got out of hand (which it won’t.) And the neighbor on the other side of the fence there had once so hoped out loud that we would plant a peach near enough to reach over her side a bit.

If we put one there it could go that far but it wouldn’t have to–perfect.

And I could plant a standard size without having to look for a semi-dwarf.

The only problem, and the thing that had stopped me previously, was the roots I would have to deal with that would surely be left over from those weed trees.

I only considered it because I’d fallen in love with a gorgeous specimen of an Indian Free peach two weeks ago, the last one at that nursery, and by the time we decided that yeah, we really did want it it was long gone and from every other retailer I called, too. Bare root and potted both, sold out.

That’s what happens when Dave Wilson, the grower, describes it as the all-time best-tasting peach they know of.

And: Indian Free (developed and named by Thomas Jefferson) does not get peach leaf curl disease. In our foggy area, this is huge. It produces in September and October, long after my others are done for the year. The peaches are tart and presumably, like my Yellow Transparent apples, uninviting to squirrels until full ripeness–at which point, suddenly, wow. The peaches, anyway.

Once we’d agreed on it I didn’t want to lose a year’s growth to having to wait. One last try. I clicked on Where To Buy for the variety one more time this morning, even though I hadn’t found anything at all within three hours and I’d spent an hour and a half on the phone yesterday asking.

But I’d wondered about this one retailer I hadn’t called–because clicking from Dave Wilson to ProBuild had been a complete bust, a page that said they sold building (only) materials. The end. Well then why…?

How about if we try clicking “handout”? For another retailer, that had been a dead link so I’d ignored them all but let’s try it.

Turns out ProBuild does have a nursery on the side with a list of what they stock but the page is not on their site but on Dave Wilson’s instead. Huh.

Indian Free. There you go.

I called them.

Sure, we have five! Bare root. Do you want us to reserve you one?

I told them nah, I’ll be right there–well, as in, coming from… Thinking, it would only be about an hour, right? I figured I was safe and I wanted to pick it out myself. (I had to pick up the dishwasher part on the way. It was an hour and a half.)

Those who have driven the steeply twisty Highway 17 over the mountains with slow trucks and heavy traffic and quickly-alternating vivid sunshine and dark under the redwoods will understand when I say I felt like I had to pry each deathgrip finger off the steering wheel when I got there, but I got there.

More or less. There was no sign with that street number. There was no sign that said ProBuild. I saw a nursery, but I wanted the one I’d talked to and I did not want to make that return drive in rush hour traffic. I figured I just hadn’t gotten there yet. (Wait! Is that Golden Fleece?! Gunilla! It was, or at least their old place, but I did not dare take the time to find out.) I kept on going, but no, the numbers were going the wrong way. Turning back, it really was San Lorenzo Nursery at 235 River over there. No sign of the word ProBuild anywhere, not even on the construction-supplies place next door.

I looked around a bit and asked for help, and when I explained the lupus/I need to stay out of the sun thing, the guy was wonderfully helpful.

I saw four. (Come to think of it now as I write, maybe they’d put one aside for me over in the area marked Holding after all–I’d better let them know I already got it.) I picked out the one with the thickest trunk. “There aren’t any on Citation rootstock, right?” (Semi-dwarfing.)

“No,” he apologized.

I hadn’t expected one; “They didn’t make any this year, though, I don’t think.” (He agreed, with a look on his face of oh, so this lady knows!)

They hadn’t been planted in paper pots as the season had gone on. The price hadn’t been quadrupled. There was a long sand and soil bed that he pulled the one out of for me and then he wrapped up the bare roots in plastic for the drive home. The tree was still dormant. This was good.

$19.95 and no tax on food-producing plants. Twenty bucks for a lifetime of perfect fall fruit, and from a really nice group of people.

I drove back over 17 with the tree going from the far back to partly into the passenger side next to me. I knew now where the mudslide had been, where the lanes were going to be narrowed. I was in no hurry. (Yank that wheel lady and you’ll have a faceful of twigs.)

UV levels went down to 1 and it was time to start.

I hit root. Root. Another root. Chipping away at the biggest there was a sudden smell of eucalyptus. There were earthworms doing their best at it all. I pulled one way back, then got sensible and got out the clippers and got rid of it.

I ran off to get Richard. And back home again. We were losing sun time fast and you don’t leave a bare root tree drying out.

In the end I did my best and simply straddled it over the chipped-away big root down there in the dirt, knowing it was dead and this was alive and the peach would win. Not perfect but I’d made a pretty darn good big hole and it would do. I mixed in soil amendment and raised the level around the trunk to just so high below the graft point like I’d seen the pros do.

I stepped back and looked and it was suddenly just overwhelmingly gorgeous. That’s a big, healthy tree. I can’t wait.

If you’re squinting, they’re at about the same point in both photos.

There’s a big new nest, Cooper’s hawk sized, in the tree next door that they favor for its height–the season has begun.

A Bewick’s wren was tugging hard at nesting material on the patio today and flew off trailing fluff in its beak.

We were getting in the car this morning when my husband said, Wait, I forgot my umbrella, and went back inside while I waited as a few drops started to fall. And so I had a moment to look up, and there, above that tree, was one of our pair, riding the thermals and circling around its nest below, letting all who fly here know that this, this spot was taken. The tree whose sweet flowers are so coveted later in the season by smaller birds.

Including the ever-swaggering crows. But we had to drive three blocks before we spotted one and then a little further down, a pair, and they were staying down low so as to be well out of sight of that hawk.

The more our Coopers hang around the more fruit we’ll get off our trees. Wishing them a successful season. Besides, fledgling raptors meandering through the amaryllises are so cute.

And Bewick’s wrens are really too small for them to bother with.

I stopped by the local nursery today and they told me the back wall along the fence is where they kept their bamboo stakes. Six feet tall, a set of six, seven bucks. Hey.

And so the frost cover won’t rest against the mango tree leaves anymore–and I spent a fair amount of time up on my tiptoes trying to get that thing over those stakes and back down firmly to the ground all around.

With all that extra space above the tree to heat up, so far at four hours after sundown there’s only a ten degree difference between the outside temp and underneath that canopy, but unless we have another severe cold snap that should be enough and I can always take them back down again while the tree’s this small.

And I won’t accidentally break off the tiny beginning of a leaf at the tippy top while taking the cover off in the mornings now. I know, I know–that one hurt, enough to get me off my duff and to go track down those stakes. Thank you all for the suggestions.

Oh, and on a side note? My friends Mel and Kris are going to be at Stitches West again this year. YES! Buy yourself some fine pottery (I’ll bet they’ll have yarn bowls) and tell’em I said hi. I put in a special request for rice bowls with extra high sides, perfect for berries and ice cream. Save me some.

The new leaves (which started this day) turn reddish before they turn green at full size.

The burn marks on the outer edges of the older leaves are from when I only had a black garbage bag to put over the tree at night–where the leaves touched it they were not happy after that exceptionally cold week of twenty-something-degree nights. The frost cover is much better, breathing, letting light in and still keeping it warmer, but better still would be to put some narrow stakes around the tree to suspend the cover above and off it. It’s above it now with that stake it came with, but it’s catching up to it fast.

Craft store? Where would you go? The 2x2s at the hardware store are a lot more massive than I want; I’m thinking more a size 15 knitting needle on stilts.

I can see the day coming soon when I will have to sew a bunch of frost covers together to make one giant one. (There are rocks on the bottom edges on the small chance of wind.) There will be more non-LED Christmas lights on it by then.

But it just amazes me how much our Alphonso mango has grown in the five weeks since we planted it. In winter! It seems to me that buying a vigorous variety in this climate, even though we’re going to keep it far shorter than it would do in its native one, is probably going to be protective against minor dieback like those leaf burns.

I missed it before. January did more than just flowers.

An O’Neill blueberry quietly doing its thing, waiting for the others to catch up. (As I look at the yarn and the calendar and realize Stitches West was almost a year ago and the next one is in two weeks and how on earth did that happen already?!)

I got me some knitting to do.

Rain is in the forecast oh thank goodness after 30 dry days and freezing is not.

I almost didn’t see it. I was walking past it and did a double take.

Blueberries. Blooming. In January. Not profusely, but hey.

I didn’t know they could do that.

Needed to buy some birdseed, and since it was right off the freeway stopped on my way home by Yamagami’s Nursery to check out the fruit trees.

And boy did they have nice fruit trees. If you wanted cherries or peaches this very year it looks like you could have exactly that.

No Lorings in stock, though; they would have to order and find out if one is available. I texted messages with Richard and came home, for now.

But when the sun was low I picked that spade back up and dug that planting hole a little deeper and now, at last, that spot feels ready for whatever will go in. It will not stay bare for long.

A side note: I know vaccination is a hot topic right now and that there are strong emotions on both sides. Hear me out, if you would. Measles is *the* single most contagious virus known, and if you simply walk through a room hours after an infected person did you can catch it. I have an immunosuppressed friend from my knitting group who got quarantined from work this week because a co-worker had been exposed to someone who’d been exposed to someone who’d been exposed to someone at Disneyland, the disease leapfrogging up the state. That’s an awful lot of quarantining and lost wages and lost time.

Our daughter the microbiology PhD was telling an anti-vaxxer the other day, Sure, if you get German measles you’ll be sick and you’ll probably recover and you probably won’t be one of the unlucky ones who goes deaf or gets pneumonia or meningitis and all that. You’ll probably be okay.

But you don’t do it for YOU. You do it for every pregnant woman. Because it is horrendously dangerous to a fetus in utero at any stage of pregnancy and extremely likely to kill or brain damage them for life. You do it for them. Because you’re a good person.

As I knit some Abstract Fibers yarn, needing lots of bright colors against the winter fog and in celebration of the fact that Stitches West is less than a month away.

I could not talk the camera into focusing on the limb rather than the fence, but here goes. Variety: Tropic Snow, an apt name given the storms back East this week. (Throw a snowball for all us weather-deprived out here, will ya?)

There was no spark of green or new growth to be found yesterday at all–I looked for it. So I certainly wasn’t expecting to find green tips everywhere today but I did, just on this one tree,  always the earliest. Peaches! It’s leafing out!

We’ve had a forlorn and bare spot in the raised bed where the bird-killing heavenly bamboo was taken out last summer and I used that burst of happiness to finally go dig there in preparation for the next tree to go in. It’s ready. I came in and told him.

Last Valentine’s Day, he took me on an expedition to Wegman’s and got me the big, healthy Comice pear of my dreams. He was anticipating as happily as I was as we talked about what this year’s version should be.

Chris was coming at 11:00 to give me a quote on a few more trees.

The doorbell rang at about ten. I wasn’t expecting him at that hour…

It was the city utility workers, here to clear limbs away from the power lines, and when the guy said that I had to laugh and ask, What trees?

They walked around the yard and went Oh. Oh wow.

But there was one limb from the camphor that had grown back up close enough to give them something to do; it didn’t take long.

And then the one who was clearly in charge casually mentioned that he does tree cutting privately on his own time, too, and he’d be glad to give me a quote on that other stuff over there. Sure. So, the yucca (it wasn’t a yucca), trim the olive, take out that and that, he gave me a verbal quote.

Nothing was written down, details could be forgotten and misunderstandings could happen. He came back later with a business card but that was as far as it went.

Just minutes after they left the first time the doorbell rang again, and there was Chris.

We talked trees a little while. He took detailed notes of what was to be done and gave me a written estimate. When I asked about the Fuji apple, he confirmed what I was pretty sure of: my gardening guy had pruned nearly all the fruiting tips off. He was trying to keep the tree down to a good size for us but he’d been a little too enthusiastic.  Chris talked about one year wood for the plum but two year for apples (and I know it’s three to ten for pears). Now, this, he said, pointing out the much smaller Yellow Transparent next to it, you’ve still got a lot of fruiting wood on this one.

But I like Fuji apples a lot better. So now I know, at least, and next year will be different.

On the other side of the house, I am a bit reluctant to see those other trees go, but they are shading the solar panels by morning and the neighbor’s garden by afternoon and we need something shorter and my apologies (again) to the birds. But at least we’ll get them out before nesting season and will replace them immediately.

Chris’s crew is booked solid for several weeks out so we have time to decide what will go in instead. I’m thinking ultradwarf sour cherries and summer-producing dwarf mandarins. Maybe.