Chomp. “Looks like they got that one.”

Understatement alert, hon, but yeah.

And yet. I haven’t stopped planting more fruit.

When I was a teenager they were building a Mormon chapel closer to home and the locals were asked to pitch in and do fundraisers to help speed things along. (These days, it’s all handled from Salt Lake City to even out the resources between communities.)

Dad had heard of a friend of a friend who really knew his citrus and who was driving truckloads of a type of mandarin none of us had ever heard of from Florida to the DC area for fundraisers for various groups–they get their fundraiser, lots of people discover what was/still is said to be the best-tasting citrus there is, he gets paid for driving his truck, everybody wins. So Dad asked for the guy’s phone number.

And that is how he and Joe Ney became good friends with a shared enthusiasm and purpose. After that building in Potomac, Maryland was finished, Dad continued to commission a truckload every Christmas.

Because everybody who’d bought a case of those juicy Page oranges (technically, tanangelos, a Minneola cross crossed with a mandarin) came back for more whenever they could; there was nothing like them and they were too small to go big commercially and I don’t think they kept particularly well so you couldn’t get them unless you had some kind of a connection to them down South. Dad wasn’t about to let go of enjoying and sharing the best of the best every December, so, if it was a truckload he had to order, a truckload it would be–sign the sheet and state your number and give everyone on your gift list a box and know that they’ll never forget it and they’ll forever be grateful.

Then a major freeze hit Florida. For all the misting and wind-machining and whatever all else they could do, most of the Pages didn’t survive, and since it was such a niche market to begin with and young trees were the most susceptible to the next frost, most growers simply didn’t replant them.

Then Joe Ney dropped dead of a heart attack. (And I hope his family somehow sees this post and knows what a great gift he shared with so very many people and how grateful we all are.)

And I have not had one of these beautiful, deeply colored, juicy, paper-thin, easily peelable almost always seedless little balls of exquisiteness since. The Cuties they sell every Christmas? That’s like an old Hersheys vs. Scharffenberger, or even more now that those two have the same owner, vs. the fantastic upstart Tcho’s.

I wrote here Tuesday about whether anyone had any fruit varieties to recommend for my newly-cleared fenceline. I got a private note asking me if tangerines could grow where I am?

Ding ding ding. That was it!! THAT was what some corner of my brain had been struggling to dredge out of the depths! Richard! We could grow our own PAGES!!!

Oh I cannot tell you how excited I was.

Which quickly got tempered by not being able to find a single source outside of Florida that night, much less one anywhere that would ship to me. There’s a quarantine on citrus trees around southern California, no help there either.

I tried again the next day. Help me out here, Google.

Google came through. Google is my friend.

And so it was that there is a grower in northern California who sells three-year-old Page tanangelo trees for $40 and says that they’re large enough that they should be producing the next year after planting. Wow!

Monday Chris’s stump grinder guy comes to give me a bid on how many stumps I want taken out and where. Monday Four Winds Growers mails out my tree by third-day UPS. Not wasting a moment here, and I had to call my mom, and when Dad wasn’t home I had to call back later to talk to him directly: after all those years after those last boxes, we are going to have Page oranges again!

The one glitch? That no-freezing thing. But if the next-door neighbors can tent their young and vulnerable orange tree with a giant lightbulb inside last January, and they did, and they celebrated their 50th anniversary something like ten years ago, seems to me I should be able to manage doing that just fine myself. Or ourselves. (And let’s see, if I get a Gold Nugget variety too we can have mandarins in winter and spring and early summer…)

Just one tree for now. Pages are also rare in that they’re a citrus that is nearly thornless–and I have grandchildren to keep from getting scratched up. I’ll keep it short enough to stay inside one of my new walk-in-size fruit cages; that should thwart the raccoons at least for a little while. (My brain is suddenly singing Little Boxes.)

Some part of me knew when I wrote that throwaway line ending that blog post that I really really did want…something….

Imagine looking forward to your first bite of chocolate in 37 years. It’s like that.

We’d bought and potted those two trees in anticipation and hope of this day happening.

They planted my cherry tree today–and since it had recently been repotted by our friends, it had only barely started to grow through to the ground. Theoretically, as an ultradwarf, it shouldn’t get too much taller than this but rather more outward.

Well we’ll see. That’s good soil in that bed. I remember my dad trying to replace a broken six foot Blue Peter rhododendron a painter had fallen onto and having been told, Blue Peters don’t grow six feet!

Mine do, he told them.

I hope to take as good care of my fruit trees as Dad did his rhodos.  Although, having a backhoe in and adding six feet downward of great soil before planting–okay, Dad, you win. (That was when their house in Bethesda, MD was being built when I was three; he asked the builder to dig a little extra along the front for his future flowers.)

The surprise was the Comice: it was a mere bare root on February 14th and already it had a good taproot squeezing through one drainage hole and smaller ones through all the others. (I drilled about 20–the Costco pots had come with none.) They had a good firm grip on the ground below.

The men checked that thing out and knocked on the door for me: would it be okay with me if they cut the pot away? There seemed to be no other choice.

I want a tree, not a pot, yes please.

They made sure that where they’d prepared was where I wanted it. I thought, eh, I might have nudged it six inches thataway but that’s just way too picky–the hole was ready and it was good so it was just right. “Perfect.”

That was when one of them asked me about that sunjacket I always pulled on every time I stepped outside.

“I have lupus,” I said, sure that that would mean nothing to him–most people have no real idea.

“One of my co-workers, his wife has lupus. Sometimes she’s in a wheelchair.”

Ohmygoodness, so he did know–I winced in sympathy. I told him sometimes I’d been in one, too.

I came away hoping that it would give comfort to whoever she was out there to know one could go through whatever she was going through and still get to be older with this disease, and I wished I could introduce her to 92-year-old Rita.

They set part of the taproot in the carved-up pot for me to see. That tree had wanted to grow freely. And now it can. Pears have no rootstock options that dwarf them as much as you could an apple or a stone fruit, so we put it in the one corner where it would not shade the solar and it would not be too close to the house. It can take over there freely in the space we opened up for it. (Dying cypress, gone at last.)

And now that blank expanse of fence on the other side has some green to it, too. I love the long lush leaves of cherries. I pulled up a chair and my knitting and stared at the loveliness and the relief of having a tree in there already. It’s a great start.

Chris came to inspect the job in progress and as we spoke in the yard, movement high above caught my eye and I pointed it out to him: there he was, Coopernicus, right on cue (always the showoff.) I told Chris we’d gotten to see him courting with his mate perched on the silk oak next door through our skylights this past spring. He thought that was so cool.

Some hunting places gone, the new begun already.

Green. Real green.

Speaking of which, kudzu is a beautiful plant. We drove past stands of it again and again last week, including a row of what had to have previously been trees with half of one crepe myrtle still visible but disappearing fast, desperately reaching branches towards the highway in a plea of Save me! as the kudzu slowly took it down, took it all down–it was impressive. The stuff simply smothers anything in the South no matter how tall and no matter how wide. Kudzilla.

We saw one area along the road that looked very familiar in a Western way: lots of narrow dark grayed stumps going straight up throughout a swath of land and everything around it still perfectly green. You see that blackened cajun seasoning searing this patch, leaving that patch raw all over the dryer parts of the West in the summers as of late–but why…?

It took me awhile to figure out that someone had done a controlled burn to take out the kudzu in the only way to really get rid of it, I guess.

Speaking of invasive species…

I told the tree guy giving me an estimate two weeks ago that the berries of heavenly bamboo kill the native birds here. He was immediately stunned at the enormity of what that meant, turning to me, his eyes big: “But it’s everywhere!”

Yes.

And that is why, as of today, our fifty or sixty year old stand of the stuff is gone; if I want a six foot tall decorative line of plants, there is no good reason not to have them be blueberries instead.

The weed trees that were starting to threaten the fence are gone, too. The sawing went on all day. It was either pay for that, or pay for that anyway and for replacing the fence next year, so, out it went. The bird center people had asked me to wait till August and we did but it could not wait another growing season.

The workers left me, at my request, the already-dead many-holed stump near the corner: it is Nuttall’s woodpecker habitat. (Besides, better they hammer there than the house.)

It is so very strange and a bit of a wrench to look out the window and see naked fence. It’s also pretty cool. Like having a brand new house: we get to choose what we want and start over!

I stuck a spade in one spot and asked Richard if he thought the potted cherry should go in there.  The workers already dug a large hole for the pear on the other side of the house. We will add an English Morello near the first cherry, the tart but not too sour type that I think is what Costco has been selling that we like so much. Five hundred chill hours–we can definitely plant that.

So much to look forward to. Even if it’s hard to have those trees gone.

I watched a gray squirrel run down the fenceline next door towards our side, and about five feet short he slowed and stopped. Stared. Wait. There WERE trees here, I KNOW there were! It tried, but it could not conjure them back into existence and it slowly turned and walked–there is no other word for it–away.

A black squirrel later was so rattled by the changes that he took a flying leap for one of the remaining trees and actually missed. A wild scramble and he caught the other part of the doubled trunk behind it just before he would have hit the ground.

It kind of feels like that, doesn’t it, little guy?

Now to pick out varieties that won’t grow too tall, that won’t take too much work, that won’t shade the solar, whose fruit will, best of all, be sweet in the hand.

Any favorite varieties of anything you want to recommend, I’d love it if you let me know.

Thirty tomatoes, one Gardman fruit cage, zero success on the part of the animals trying to get through to them now that they’re under there and my blueberries in another one the entire season have been fine, too. The mesh has not been chewed through. They cannot scoot under the bottom edge. (It helps that the ground is flat where I have them.)

I’d bought the smallest cage because, hey, price, wishing I could afford the unzip-and-walk-in size that you could put over a small fruit tree if you don’t mind maxing out at 77” high.  But at $139.95, no way.

Tonight–and this may change by morning if the things suddenly become popular again, Amazon likes to play ping pong with prices, but tonight, that biggest one was suddenly $49.95. One peach tree and one extra dwarf cherry, I checked with Richard and then ordered two.

It was auto-checked at $72 shipping. Or, free! Uh, let’s click free, thanks.

I know there’s another brand of these on the market where the mesh is so fine that honeybees can’t get through (I presume so that mice can’t) and the wind catching them like a sail is a problem. I watched a bee hover in and out of my tomatoes today and away, free as a breeze.

So in case anyone else wants one I thought I’d mention.

August, pried. (Milk jug offers perspective on size.) Animal-repellent cinnamon branch against the trunk, knocked way over thataway.

On the other hand, I really did want to plant a Loring peach but I just couldn’t justify having two trees producing the same kind of fruit in the same month.

It got so close. We now have two almost-ripe peaches inside on the counter next to Sunday’s tomato knockoffs. After taking out some smaller branches, the raccoon simply lopped off the top more-than-half of the entire tree by its weight, thus putting the August Pride back to about what it was when I planted it with about a third of the leaves it started the spring with.

That was a heck of a pruning job, Rocky.

Should have tracked down and bought some of those bird-netting tree-trunk-protection things I’ve seen a few times.

(p.s. But at least he left my tomatoes alone last night.)

This is the before picture from a few days ago. (There were a lot more tomatoes behind those leaves.)

I had the plants in pots on top of a small table. I taped many strips of mylar bird-be-gone tape to hang from the top of it and it seemed a really good idea; the squirrels raided the neighbors’ but left mine alone.

All it was missing last night, though, was the tablecloth to yank on. One good leap and the table tilted hard into the parched ground on the far side and every single pot came crashing down.

Presumably on the critter’s head.

Oops.

With the actual tomatoes all apparently accounted for this morning as far as I could tell, clearly it didn’t get much for all that. Whether the plants will survive the abrupt depotting and smashing, one can only hope. They are definitely hanging loose.

Richard helped me separate and pick up so I could get back out of the sun faster–and he encouraged me, when I gouged myself on some rusty metal with dirt all over my hand, to go look up when my last tetanus shot was.

Scanning down the screen for the magic word… 2004. Oh. On the phone, the clinic told me not to risk a delay, so I went in after church (with mental apologies to them for my coming in on a Sunday. Everybody deserves a day off.)

The nurse was about to give me the shot when her computer beeped at her. She did a doubletake.

The tdap booster on my chart that I’d skimmed right past? 2010. That t was for tetanus. (Oh of course.) Dodged it this time.

We have a hummingbird-friendly people-unfriendly cactus-level-sharp-spined flowering don’t-know-what-it’s-called in our yard.

This evening I clipped a whole lot of those flowers, which are several feet long and spent and well past hummingbird prime, and poked the stems in towards the center of the table to do porcupine duty over my coveted heirlooms. Any raccoon jumping up now is going to get a snoutful.

I wonder how many broken pots we’ll have in the morning.

I read about a year too late that if you’re going to have a small fruit tree in a container you want a plastic one with sides going straight down rather than cone shaped for the sake of avoiding root rot.

Oh. I’d just simply bought what Costco had last year.

Well hey, they were now selling a larger, non-conical one and I could always use the first to put tomatoes into, and at some point I mentioned to a friend that I wondered if I should ask for help to transplant that tree to where the roots would have more room but but really I shouldn’t, so, never mind, forget I said anything. I nearly deleted the email, and said that, too.

She laughed off my hesitation after checking first with her husband and strapping boys and so, today they came over and wrestled that thing. Turns out the roots were growing out the drainage holes and into the ground–extra dwarf or no, that tree wanted room and extracting it was a handful.

They made it sound afterwards like it had been completely easy and between the three of them, with the three-year-old baby brother happily running a Tonka tractor around their feet, they did it. They even insisted on moving the new container afterwards to where the old one had been, where the sun was a little better.

They got sent home with a chocolate torte with my profuse thanks. I’ve been praying hard since then that their backs are okay, amazed and in awe that they would volunteer like that just because.

I was only able to spend a little time out there in the bright sun, mostly watching through the window, so I had to ask Richard afterwards: what happened to all that gravel I’d had at the bottom of the pot? I’d had it in there for drainage and stability and I didn’t see any later.

What gravel?

And I had more in the new pot, with a layer of dirt on top to get it all ready for them.

We didn’t see but a tiny bit of gravel.

Uh. Ohhh. That rootball must have been really heavy, then, I mean, I had a lot… Yow.

Wow.

I had some below the layer of soil at the waiting bottom of the new pot, too, and when they were done with the transplanting they scooted the thing over to where it had been previously. That tree looked beautiful when they were done.

What can I say–our friends totally rock!

Another thing that happened at Lee’s birthday celebration: I have long wanted to know whom to ask, someone who really knew, and wow, there he was.

Years ago the local paper did an article on a type of mango so fiberless and fragile and so perfect that it could not be shipped to grocery stores, and expats from India would sign up at an Indian grocer in the area for so many cases and would wait to meet a planeload’s worth coming in: picked and picked up all in a very short time frame, at astronomical prices.

I remembered the story but not the variety.

I’ve talked for two years now about buying a mango tree and about what it would take to have it survive any freezing temps here. One grower’s suggestion led to the classic protest from Richard about how he was not going to be the neighbor with Christmas lights up in March. Which is funny. But he had a point.

There are other ways. Some fairly difficult.

Lee’s friend Dani was from India and he’s done those signups. He grew up with an Alphonso tree in his yard producing one to two hundred a year, and he said it was THE mango, the only mango, the most coveted one in all of India. The perfume! He mimed waving it towards his face in blissful memory. So intense! The flavor! There was nothing like it, nothing.

Mallika was the variety I had thought I wanted. He had not heard of it. He’s been here awhile and it’s a new variety, maybe?

We emailed back and forth a bit afterwards and so he lit a fire under me to find out more.

Mallika: “Among the best.” Alphonso: “The best, the most sought after.” Ah. I had not compared them side by side before because I hadn’t known to.

But here’s the thing: at Lee’s that night, when I told Dani I’d more or less given up on the idea anyway, not quite sure I wanted another container tree (on a platform so that we could wheel it close to the house in winter–good luck with that chore) and not sure I wanted to plant it in the ground either, not sure it would survive without a lot of work–we do get some freezes, even if not many–he, having already found a 3 gallon size available (I want it a 7) via his phone by that point in the conversation, passionately urged me to go ahead and get that tree, emphasizing with each word: “If you don’t try you will never know.”

This just might happen after all and it will be because of him.

I’m now on the waiting list for notification for when the 7-gallon size comes in. Lee’s friend admitted he hopes I give him a few Alphonsos someday when it produces, and I assured him I owed him that thanks, yes. Absolutely.

I think that’s one of the reasons I put the tomato pots where I did last month: to prove there’s enough sun in that spot near the south side of the house for production. Done.