March comes in on clumsy feet, kicks the trashcans down the street… Two warm days got things going and tomorrow the rain and chill come back.

Apricot seeds seem to get a better start in direct sun rather than behind a window, so the ones that had started to show signs of life were now outside in pots.  Three had leaves, two, just the beginnings of a tap root.

Five still-dormant ones were inside in their Root Riot plugs to keep a closer eye on because those can dry out fast. I knew I would need more pots and more soil soon.

There was this one out there that had a tiny white stub showing that on the others had turned into a cluster of leaves within a few hours–but not that one. The very tiniest discernible change took two days.

I considered its reluctance to thrive and said a quiet prayer: could You help the ones that would make great fruit to grow and thrive and end up where they’ll do the most good for somebody and the ones that wouldn’t to not encumber the time and water it would take to find out?

Yesterday morning that slow-mo seed was on top of the soil near the edge of the pot. Uprooted. Stabbed. No claw digging around it, no sign of a squirrel.

But at least the seed was still there to let me get a good detective-eye look at it, which was a nice touch.

I wondered how birds clean the dirt off their dinner and considered the fact that some types of apricot seeds are supposed to be sweet.

Today it wasn’t there. Nor was the other one out there that had cracked open and sent out the beginnings of a root but didn’t have leaves yet, nope, picked right out of the Root Riot within the pot to parts unknown. Definitely birds.

A little later a scrub jay flew onto the patio. Crows in blue finery. It was the first time I’ve seen one there in a year, the mockingbirds having bested them last year. It landed on the outside of a window ledge where I’ve never seen one land before because it really didn’t fit, tail and rear end smushed up hard against the wall behind it where it could guard its new territory: looking at me, looking at those three other pots lined up, looking at me. Novel take on a bird feeder ya got there, lady, don’t mind if I do.

Those last three had leaves–but the seedlings were so young that they hadn’t absorbed all the nutrients from the kernels yet, so the split halves were rounded little brown wings flapping and clapping and cheering on the little stalks stretching for the sky and clearly they still looked nicely tasty.

No you don’t. Those are mine. I found a small bird netting tent to fit over two of them and a mesh for the third.

Well, huh. I did say that prayer… Thanks for Darwinning those two for me, Jay!

And now I have two already-prepared large pots waiting for the next ones to wake up. Does that mean I’m done letting myself be told which ones are of future goodness? Hey, there’s more than one way to kill a plant, trust me, I’m good at it. Bumped into one pot last year and knocked it off the table right on its head. Once you snap it below the leaf line it’s done.

And over in that corner, I got my first set of tomato leaves today. Yay! Happy March!

Go grow things, it’s fun!

One whole side of the pomegranate tree popped out in small reddish new leaves overnight, officially declaring winter over. It had looked utterly dormant yesterday. Yay!

Things are starting to wake up.

In case anyone hasn’t heard: there is a move afoot to show the power of the people to those bent on ascribing it all to themselves.

Note that Jeff Bezos today announced that there will be no dissenting editorializing at his Washington Post from here on out: only those that support his vision of what ‘freedom’ means as he supports the current administration.

He asked the Opinions editor if he could agree to what he was being told to do, and Shipley said no. He is out.

Politico marveled, for a man supposedly bright about business, having already lost a quarter million subscribers in reaction to his exerting control over the editorial section before last Fall’s election, Bezos didn’t even try to hide it.

We have recourse. Friday, there’s a call for all to stop being consumers for one day: no buying (in some quarters, an exception is made for paying in cash to local small businesses, ie helping the little guy and not sending off a percentage of their earnings to the big banks via credit cards). No Amazon, no opening ads in your inbox, no shopping, no big corporations. Show our power of the purse to those whom that’s all they care about, to those who are cutting funds to the poorest (Medicaid, starving people, my stars) to give more to the richest.

Go on financial strike. Show them who’s really boss.

Just for a day.

There may need to be more.

Let’s see if Bezos lets it be reported on.

Note that Jennifer Rubin, lawyer and as of about a month ago a now-former editorial writer at the Post (her column was named Right Turn for her Republican take on politics, until Trump 1.0), co-founded “The Contrarian: not owned by anybody” a few weeks ago with one of the lawyers from the first impeachment hearing and it is already up to half a million subscribers. Nice.

Four Anya apricot kernels I planted this year have started to sprout, and the fastest two went from showing a tiny white nothing of a stub yesterday evening to a raised baby fist of leaves today in a rapidly-opening, deepening green. It never gets old.

At 14″W x 11″ H the pots I put the rooting plugs in are big enough for the trees to grow in for this year while being small enough for me to be able to lift to give away after they do.

I have more kernels still than I thought I would, so if anyone would like to try to grow some of these, I’ll be glad to send you some.

The original orchard referenced in that article was torn down and replaced with almond trees because they paid the bills better, which is absolutely gutting. Because there are no apricots like these apricots.

(And now to go start some tomatoes…)

First peach flower of the year. (Tree pruned by a tumbling raccoon its first year. It got that one first-year peach, though, so it was okay with that.)

p.s. Wallace the Brave, just for fun.

The folks who bought the house next door a few months ago were thrilled at being offered an apricot tree.

Of the three Anya seedlings I had left, this one was as nearly perfectly balanced as you could ask for, a beautiful specimen. It’s the one that grew only a few inches tall its first year after its growth tips had died while we were out of town (the 4″ vitamin K-uptake-killing coir pot hindering leaf production did not help) but it was still alive so I kept watering it. Last year it hit 53″. It’ll be standing on its tiptoes to wave hi over the fence before you know it.

I explained that I’d chosen a smaller one for my yard for its late leafing-out and its slower growth for my limited space. I’d almost put the big one in anyway just because it’s such a perfect, healthy tree.

Big was fine with them. They knew exactly where they wanted to plant it, and when they told me, I told them that’s where the former owners had kept their garden for years. A very good sunny spot and it’ll have plenty of room. Very cool.

They told me of losing a plum tree to disease at their old house and how hard that had been.

Their big tree on the other side of the house, I told them, is a Santa Rosa plum that was there when the sellers’ parents had moved in about 60 years ago. They will have their plums back.

So now this tree has been dolly’d to its new home. And if by chance either theirs or mine ends up needing a pollinator–and having one always helps anyway–there will be one right on the other side of the fence, same mother tree but already clearly just different enough.

While the adults were talking, their little boy discovered our toy corner and in great excitement with each discovery arranged all our Hot Wheels into a curved-just-so traffic line behind the big yellow Tonka truck leading the way. And life is good.

More Anya apricot seeds went out in the mail, with a few left.

It is going to be cold and (finally!) rainy the next five days here, which feels fitting: the skies themselves mourning those lives lost in the air crash in DC.

James Fallows, pilot and reporter, says helicopters are forbidden above 200′ in that airspace. The New York Times says they were at 300′ and a half mile off the course directed by the controller–and that the helicopter pilot had flown that route before and knew those restrictions before they hit that plane.

It took me straight back to my mom’s close friend’s agony waiting to hear whether the father of her children during his commute home had been on the 14th Street bridge that another plane from National (now Reagan Airport) hit 40 years ago after not de-icing. He was not heard from for hours–but he was safe.

All those rescuers on those cold waters, hoping to be able to deliver that same news to other families but seeing only wreckage and worse.

Knitting. I tell you. Six rows again today. Needed to. Bright colors, fishy fish, creation-ing.

That second octopus’s last arm is just going to be too short if I don’t add another strand and put up with weaving its ends in, too. (Appraising look.) Nope. I’ll never be satisfied with it if I don’t. First thing tomorrow.

Remind me to break off a longer piece next time.

Notable quote of the day from Robin Givhan of the Washington Post: “Patriotism is like the love that a parent has for a child; nationalism is akin to believing that one’s child can do no wrong.”

Meantime, I did six more afghan rows and I figure if I can keep that up I can finish it in under two months.

But what feels like the big thing is I went out there and pruned back the pomegranate tree by a third. Not even the tree companies like that job, or at least not their employees the one time I hired it out.

We were running out of January, though, and January is the time of year not only when it’s dormant but when its needle thorns are the least stabby (oh look there’s a splinter), though they are definitely still there. I skipped the pruning last year. Bad idea.

As I said to Richard afterwards, It was encroaching on the sour cherry and I would much rather have more sour cherries than thorny pomegranates. And not be stabbed at while I pick them.

So. Many. Branches. Thin, flexible, and in no way up to holding up the heavy fruit to come; instead they bow way down under the weight, like a cross between a porcupine and a weeping willow wearing jewelry.

Its haircut improved it immensely. I finally wised up and went looking for heavy gloves before reaching for the pile of cuttings.

My gardener cleared out a spot among the California Coffeeberry plants, dug a generous hole, didn’t knock himself out with the spade bouncing back at his head like I did one time when I tried to do that, and planted one of my Anya apricot seedlings that had been waiting for that moment for four years. Finally finally finally in the ground!

I may do some more pruning back of those Coffeeberries. Let some more light in.

I was feeling pretty exuberant about it all when the phone rang: my friend Karen, wanting to stop by. Sure!

We had a great visit and I dragged her out there to see my tree. I had four. I’d chosen the one that had leafed out the latest in the year last year so that its future blooms would be less likely to get hit with a freeze.

Which turned into her being thrilled that she got to go home with another one, the only one in a small enough pot that I could carry it to her car. The first time she’d driven, she told me, since breaking her arm. Much better now.

Ohmygoodness!

Her son would get it out for her and help her plant it, no worries, and meantime we were both pleased at how the tree and pot fit in there just so so that it wasn’t going to fall over and the thin limbs weren’t going to break.

Another hour or two and I was taking the trash to the curb. The new neighbor stepped out the door just as I got to the sidewalk, taking her toddler for a walk to see the sunset.

Even 350 miles away, we’re having spectacular ones from the fires down south. But anyway.

I mentioned about Andy’s and how they sell these particularly good and juicy apricots and (taking a leap) I had seedlings from them; would they like one?

Her face lit up. I would love an apricot tree! How big is it?

She had her choice, I said, with the biggest being 53″ tall, but they would have to help me get it to them. Check with her husband and let me know.

Meantime, if anyone wants to try to grow some of these from seed, let me know. I have some this year.

Our guests were back here in time for dinner. They’re leaving around 5 a.m. for their cross-country flight home and I will miss them so much.

Heading out, the burning question is, will those Reine Claude Green Gage plums from Andy’s grow in Maine?

I told her Trees of Antiquity not only sells them but considers that variety the best tasting stone fruit they have. They’d be a good one to ask–and I reminded her that our Sam grew a Meyer lemon in Vermont because she wanted to enough. Go for it.

We were the parents of three, soon to be four. We had just moved across the country where we knew nobody and had more than doubled our mortgage payments. Things were quite tight.

Monajo simply randomly decided that it would be a great day to go visit the new young couple, and with a call and a would-it-be-alright, she stopped by. The surprise was that it was with beautiful homegrown veggies from her garden.

And what a garden. I had no idea. In this city of postage-stamp lots, she had at least an acre with a creek at the back looping in a half circle near the very old bay tree that had grown multiple trunks into what she loved to call her fairy circle, with a very large hammock suspended at the center.

She was a master gardener and loved making arrangements. One day she donated a large number of her flowers in order to teach a flower arranging class on a Saturday at church.

However you place them, visually, you want things to be in sets of three, she told us. Upper, middle, lower, is the traditional Japanese way, or…

I got there late–kids’ schedules and stuff–and there were very few left to choose from, and this was not my field of expertise whatsoever but I tried, I really tried.

She came over to see how mine had come out and helpfully said, Let’s get you started.

I looked at her.

Well, actually, I thought mine was done… (Thinking, and I will never be as good as you at it but that’s okay because we have you and you are a treasure.)

She was the original instigator of our December Birthday Club. She would have turned ninety at this year’s.

When I saw her infant great grandchildren I understood why the delay; those babies had needed to arrive before their mothers got on planes.

The flowers at her memorial service today were glorious, as you knew they had to be and where they had come from. Her children have their mother’s master’s touch.

And there were these tiny seed packets with a note for every person who came: explaining that sweet peas had been Monajo’s favorite flower. She had passed while they were in full, glorious bloom. These were the seeds from those flowers, and she was inviting us into her garden one last time and forevermore.

You wanted to see the colorway. The tag in the bag says London Sky, but it could be the wrong one? It’s mainly on the brown side of purple, but that could be my cataracts talking.

Knitting intentions aside, it turned out to be a day for running around getting things done. Including a two-hour  trip to Andy’s.

Searching for Lorings, the great peaches of my childhood, is how I discovered Andy Mariani and his orchard I don’t know how many years ago now and it was a treat to bring some home. My family used to drive out to an orchard in West Virginia well after the peaches had been harvested: all the tiniest hardest rocks of fruit left behind would, by the time the farmer called Dad, have had the entire resources of the trees to themselves and by the time we six kids climbed the trees to get to them they were huge. How often do you get to eat a 24 oz peach that streams juices through your hands as you do? And that taste that good?

I did not believe there could be a better peach. Andy gently let me know in those initial emails way back when that, in fact, there is. And proved it when I tasted his Kit Connells and Baby Crawfords.

They’re not on yet and Lorings and happy memories would definitely do for today.

On a side note, I don’t know if you can buy a tree of it yet, but if you ever want the perfect nectarine, the Raspberry Red variety that Andy developed is the best I have ever tasted.

This one was the ugly duckling: it sprouted last year but a heat wave while we were out of town and that was that. My two inch tree. And yet somehow it lived.

This is also the one that had thrips eating the juices to all its attempts at new growth this spring. I squished them between my fingers every night till none came back and looked at my poor sorry little apricot wannabe and wondered: of the five, why was only that one attacked? Is it sweeter? Or just scrawnier and easier to get at? Does it mean that’s the one I should want to put to ground, does it mean I shouldn’t?

It gave itself hopeful little pep talks all spring but there wasn’t a lot to see.

Then almost suddenly, a month into summer, it has the best form and the most abundant growth of them all. All that stuff it went through, it turns out, pruned and prepped it well. This is really only its first year, and look at that!

Someone is going to love this tree over its lifetime. Might even be me.

They are! They’re actually eating the leaves. Goldfinches love sunflower leaves specifically and this site recommends planting them near your veggies as a decoy because you might as well make use of this, right?

They said it mostly happens in California. I have questions.

My phone could see the details my eyes no longer can, and upon embiggening that’s exactly what those two birds were.

But I like my sunflowers… So I took a bit of bright pinkish-red thick yarn and tied it around the upper stalk of the one they were going after the hardest.

It didn’t take long before I saw another one swooping in–and then whoawhoawhoa!!! it about did a backflip in the air trying not to continue in that direction. Close!

It went to ground. It started eating the weed seeds. The little tiny stabby ones that attack your socks and wedge themselves into the yarn and you can hardly see them but man can you feel them. Hey you guys! Eat those!

Next thing you know we had a small flock doing exactly that.

Postscript: Most cities around here canceled their fireworks, given the intense heatwave and the wildfires already going, but it turns out the ones closest to us were still on. They apparently were moved so as to be completely over the water, which means we could stand in our front yard and see almost everything. Well into it, the kids and mom across the street finally opened the door to ask questions; we called to them to come on over, our place was on enough of a rise that they would see a lot more from here.

They had lived all over the world and then here the past few years and the kids had questions about the Fourth of July. I couldn’t hear much over the booms but Richard gave them a bit of Fort McHenry history.

There was one again! Did you see the sunflower?! Oh that’s so cool!

And then yet another sunflower. YES.

And good memories were made for all.

Two volunteer sunflower plants, presumably with the same parent (I only grew one last year) but they did not come out the same variety at all. Cool.

I saw a small chickadee type landing on the multi-headed one this afternoon and I thought at first it was coming to inspect for seeds. Wrong plant, bird, you want the one over there, that’s where they’re starting to fill in.

But that’s not what it was after.

It carefully stabbed then shredded a leaf.

I hadn’t known I’d taken a before picture.

There are more sunflowers along the fence, and I actually planted those, and it bugged me yesterday when the leaves of the tallest were suddenly mostly gone. I blamed snails. And I had spent a lot of time hand-picking them out of my yard.

Side note: some idiot in the Gold Rush days thought he was going to make his particular fortune by selling escargot to the 49er types and imported French snails towards that end. When the business somehow did not take off among that segment of the American population, the snails were released around the river that runs by San Jose Airport. Where even the local wildlife mostly turned up their noses.

But this looked like what I’d just watched.

I found myself flashing back to my late neighbor proudly showing me their garden and the squash plant leaves that were totally shredded: birds had used them to build their nests and Jim loved that they’d contributed to the next generation.

I would never have known if not for that. Birds? Steal zucchini leaves? But of course it made sense.

And now here I was actually watching how it was done.

July 3 is awfully late for nest-building–but on the other hand, if a clutch fails, bereaved songbird parents will throw the year a do-over if the weather is good. Um. It hit 102F these past two days and I wouldn’t call that good for much, but I’ll let them do them.

I’m hoping that means that in another month I’ll get to see baby birds learning to fly all over again. It is always such a kick.

 (That subject line was for my dad. He’d have loved it.)

Sink, bowl, plate, small bowl. Far right, right, middle, left. Faucet for occasionally washing leafy bits off.

Pick up a cherry, swivel it in your fingers to where you feel and see the belly button of the thing pointing towards the left. Gently squish the pit out and grab it with your left hand and into its bowl while dropping the fruit onto the plate with your right. Each hand going in its natural direction, thus less likely to mix up which goes where.

With the small soft tart cherries, doing it by hand is faster than dealing with the pitter and you know you’re not missing any stones.

When I was done I drained the pits and added their juice to the bag.

I’d always wanted to know what the weight ratio of pit to pulp was. So now I know: for my English Morellos, it was 2.29 lbs of fruit for today’s picking and .314 lbs of pits.

The chance of randomly landing that second number hints at a sense of humor of the Divine. Love it.

Okay, so, divide the one into the other and you get 7.3 times and it’s all good.

Don’t forget Thursday’s debate. Whatever one’s political affiliations, we’ll get to see the candidates as they actually are, not as presented by political hacks doing video slices-and-dices.