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…

Made a quick run to Costco for milk and orange juice–sound familiar?–and the glass-faced curio cabinets were nowhere to be seen.

This, meantime, had been at floor height Saturday, but now it’s not just above bumping-into height, it’s tied in place. Well done.

And here on the home front.

I noticed a few leaves knocked off the Page mandarin and wondered which genius squirrel thought that was a tree worth climbing with nowhere to go from there. I went to snap a picture or two of its growth of this past week; there’s been enough that you can see it clear from the window.

Somehow I had never, not in the unpacking, not in the planting, not in the earlier picture taking, not in the watering, not in a week of obsessing happily over my new tree, had I seen what Four Winds Growers had given to me. I had told them this story and I guess they wanted to get me my first taste of my own Page as soon as possible. It had been 37 years. Thank you thank you thank you!

Maybe that squirrel (if it was a squirrel) wasn’t so dumb after all.

(Edited to add in the morning: Richard thought last night that I should pick it to let the little tree put all its energy into growing for now. Some critter agreed with him and made it a moot point. Ah well, all the more for next year.)

One is cute, 1500 is a bit Biblical.

The box looked the size and type that would have, say, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in it. There was a square cut-out in the lid covered in mesh.

So I expected a mesh bag inside with, y’know, a twisty tie or something.

Richard had thought that ladybugs for our yard would be a good idea, and for eight bucks towards doing good to the environment wherever they might go off to, why not, so he bought me some.  Computer scientists and bugs and all that.

So here he was Saturday night, flashlight in hand to help me watch my step out there (he’s a good one) as we went out onto the back patio. The ladybugs were more likely to stay in the area you put them in if it’s dark out.

But it was actually pretty well lit right there on the patio side of the window and I thought I’d start with a few over at the amaryllis pots on the picnic table. I lifted the lid.

And gave a small yelp and jumped back–but at least I didn’t drop the thing.

“What’s wrong?”

I mumbled something about there were bugs in there and a mass of them were coming at my hands and okaynevermindyeahthatwasstupid.

I tried to make sure they were aimed away from me at all times as we walked around playing Johnny Appleseed at nature, having no way to see if they were blowing back into our hair (don’t even THINK that!) Amaryllis. Fling! Page Mandarin. Fling! Cherry. Fling! Apple. Fling! Pear. Fling fling double fling leave the lid there too on that one and let them sort themselves out.

And some on the lemon, since I hadn’t quite been able to persuade the last of them to leave the cup part at the previous stop.

I woke up in the morning thinking, wow, did we just feed the birds dessert first or what?

But I saw at least one if not two ladybugs on every one of the baby fruit trees when I gave them a quick check, so, so far so good.

The ice cream box had little specks all over the bottom. I have no idea if there are eggs in there or if it’s all just bug poop. I think I’ll give it a few days. That I don’t have to go near it.

First thing bright and early in the foggy morning after a night’s rest, still pretty tightly tucked in on itself. (Backstory here.)

And at 6 pm.

Love and light and water as needed and promises of more for the life of it. 

It came it came!

And I wasn’t even home. I was at a carpet store way down in San Jose and Richard was working from home so he’s the one who got to answer the doorbell; he told me he called out, “Thank you!” to the UPS driver heading back to his truck, as one does.

I got the text while comparing berber vs plush and how it would feel on a crawling baby’s knees or little boys tumbling down. I tried not to be jealous as I drove home.

I took pictures of the box. Dusk never felt so far off. Hurry, hurry! I finally had to at least see and slid it out and found it looked like a NASA experiment.

A little while later, not wanting to risk drying it out or anything…I peeked some more. Cute little kitten’s-paw leaves sneaking upwards.

At last it was 7:00, Wunderground said UV was 1 out of 12, I declared it good enough, lupus-wise–but before I went outside, I asked Richard once again if he thought I should widen the back of the hole away from that pipe.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. He offered to help but since this was my baby he let me do it myself like I wanted.

Got the spade, put the tip exactly right there and gave it one good heave ho pushing down hard with my foot.

I actually don’t quite know how the next thing that came to be was that I was suddenly facing the other way, rear end to one side of the hole and the backs of my legs–well, mostly one–fully scraped and muddy down the calf, but my feet were way over up on the other side and how did they get there and all in one nice smooth motion and I have no idea how that happened. At all.

Okay, maybe not so much on the widening thing. It’s trying to tell me something there and me, I try to be a good listener. Really, I do.

I looked at the hole. I looked at the dug-up dirt to the side, which was full of now-dry clumps and gravel and it would all need to be figured out which was which: the former owners did love their (now deeply embedded, 50-60 years later) gravel path. The obvious hit me at long last–I definitely needed better soil than what I had there and I should have thought of that sooner. Dad and his rhododendrons and all that.

So I was glad I’d gotten an earlyish start and headed over to the hardware store less than a mile away. Bought two bags, organic, pasteurized chicken poop, the works. The fellow they asked to help me to my car with them looked bored and like he couldn’t wait for that work day to be over so I thought I’d lighten it up a little by sharing in brief my sense of anticipation: the commissioned truck. The Page mandarins you couldn’t get any other way. The thirty-seven years since I’d had one, and finally, “My tree came today.”

Suddenly he had this big surprised grin all over his face and he teased me that I was going to have to bring some of those mandarins back to that store for him to test out, y’know! To make sure they were good enough!

Richard got those heavy bags out of the car for me and over to the spot and I got back to it.

And…I didn’t have enough soil, clearly, from trying too hard not to spend too much money on my hobbies….  But you only get one chance to start that tree off right. I checked with him. Orchard Supply Hardware was still open. Back I go.

The guy did a doubletake as he spotted me going past his aisle again: “Back already?!”

“Yeah, needed more soil,” I said to him. “Just, don’t fall in the hole,” and I did a quick below-the-knee skirt hoist  to show him the row’d rash. He started to gasp but then since I was laughing a good one he about fell over in relieved guffaws. It WAS funny.

“You’re REALLY going to love those oranges now!” he told me.

Y’know? He was right.

I have a gardener and his helper twice a month to do the outside stuff I can’t, and today happened to be the day.  They came after the stump grinders were gone and marveled at the changes in the place and loved it when I asked for opinions and advice on what I should do next here and here and here.

I told them about the tanangelo (the computer still doesn’t like that spelling but it’s correct) tree and where I was going to want it to go in–they thought it a good spot–and would it be okay to ask for help digging the hole?

Sure!

I had no idea…. I glanced out the window and thought oh, they don’t have to prepare the hole that much, the tree’s not here yet, although maybe adding water makes it easier to dig? Not aiming it very well, you don’t want it spraying the fence like that. ! Wait, where’s the hose?! How are they doing that?

Just then one of them started coming my way.

A whole lot of years ago Richard, with help from the kids, dug up and put in a watering line with a master control switch in the garage. Which got damaged and was never replaced and a gopher had bitten through the line over on the left anyway and the whole thing had essentially been forgotten about.

That water line on the right side was still live–who knew? There’d been no sign of it. So we had a few minutes there where we were trying to cut it off as it sprayed out of the hole and against the fence. The line to the house? Didn’t do it, it just meant I had no water inside. Huh.

In the no-coincidences department, my husband wasn’t feeling great yesterday and told his boss he would probably work from home today. And did.

He knew there were two water lines whereas I had no idea. He knew where the plumbing supplies were in the garage to cap that thing off, too, and soon all was well.

Wasting water is a $500 fine in California these days and that fence got doused nicely while that thing was going wild, which thanks to his being there, wasn’t more than ten minutes.  On the other hand, one of the tests for whether you’ve picked a good site to plant a fruit tree is to fill the hole with water and see how long it takes it to drain out–if the water just sits there, forget it.

We seem to have just the right spot. Um, except for that pipe crossing the edge. Clearly, it won’t be hard to get water to that one. I think I’ll just spade out a bit at that far edge there….

My next-door neighbor was walking past my house as I was coming out and we both stopped and chatted a moment.

They always plant quite the garden, but it had not been very productive this year; maybe, he said, it was that they watered it less in the drought. He marveled though at how much brighter and sunnier it is there now that my tree folk have done their work.

“Maybe it was my trees that were the problem,” said I, with a new reason to be glad the problem ones are gone now.

“But they were there before.” He was ever the diplomat.

“But they were taller this year than ever before.”

He conceded the possibility.

Then I told him the story of the Page oranges and that a three-year-old Page tree was on its way here and it was fun to watch his face break out in a huge grin like that. I knew they’d planted their own orange and nurtured it and watched it come to fruiting and he knew how much I was going to enjoy that process.

I forgot to tell him, though, that this was going to be one tree that wouldn’t shade his garden like the ones that are gone: there will be no twenty towering feet high and twenty across but rather half that at most. But then, he probably already figured that part out. And that our trees will help each other be more productive, self-fertile or no.

And here I am writing about Pages again because I can’t do anything else to make that new tanangelo come any faster–hurry, tree! I’m waiting!