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.

And so it begins: the brief days that start with an hour of picking/pitting/bagging/labeling/freezing.

These ended up in the fridge all day, mmm, tart cherry pie, but I just couldn’t do it: we had been out of frozen ones and I needed that first bag ready against the winter to come, that sense of getting the work started. One to save, first.

Up to you, he said.

Freezer it is.

Besides, a few more days out there in the sun for the rest and then we will have the perfect reason for a little celebratory baking anyway.

As I flash back to the person who shook our hands in the receiving line in Maryland and told us, Congratulations. You guys picked the hottest day for this date on record.

(Suddenly wondering if that record held….)

I showed Lillian this picture of my blooming sunflower and she was puzzled.

“Where’s the black?”

I explained that it starts off with lots and lots of tiny green buds at the center that become lots and lots of tiny yellow flowers and those become the seeds and yes they’re going to be black.

Six days later, those flowers look like tiny molds for what is to come.

Back when I planted a tomato seedling in a pot and a sunflower popped up next to it, I wanted them both so I left it that way and thought of it as a science experiment.

I’m so glad I did. I love looking out the window and seeing that sun-of-the-earth.

The sunflower is going to be done and gone long before the cherry tomato, which will take off from there.

Meantime, I just ran the ends in on the blanket. It came out of the blocking not only remarkably soft, as Rios is, but the gray shows how a good worsted-spun merino, where the fibers are combed to all run in the same direction, can have such a beautiful sheen to it.

(Foil at bottom to thwart slugs.)

The ordinary weekly chore of dragging the hose around the yard, pointing it towards a tree, setting a timer, BRAAAAAP then the next then the next then the next, repeat, while taking the time to closely see the changes: some week by week, some from even just this morning when my tomato was an inch shorter and the netting tent was tall enough.

This is why I haven’t put in an automatic system. There’s calibrating to varied sizes while knowing the sizes will change but also I seem to want it to make me have to go out and spend one-on-one time with the outdoors in the evening, when I finally can in the day.

Everything’s growing. Everything’s reaching up and out to what each plant or tree was meant to be. The best of the sun to them all.

These are the moments when I think having something living to watch and nurture and see responding to care, even a seedling in a paper cup, is as necessary to the soul as the air that we breathe.

It’s been a long time since someone yelled at me like that. I was not supposed to be out there. I was not supposed to be in their space. I most definitely was not supposed to be picking the strawberries and blueberries that they hadn’t been able to get at underneath that bird netting.

I looked up. The mourning dove on the telephone wire tucked its head under its wing: Not me!

That mockingbird was somewhere but I wasn’t quite sure just which tree. Loud, insistent, and incessant! I was surprised that a bird could make a person who has such a terrible time hearing on the phone know just how big a piece of its mind it was giving me. Nonstop. I almost wanted to apologize to the neighbors, while at the same time, it was totally making my day. Look at this! I’m hearing a bird!

Here, I offered, looking at one strawberry and then tossing it to the ground, that one you can definitely have. And that one. That’s probably the bug that chomped them–that’s definitely for you, too.

I finished picking the ripe ones and headed on inside so it would know I was no longer–what, a threat to its babies somewhere above my head? Did I accidentally chase off its one chance at a late mate this summer? Beats me.

Meantime, my plastic container of sourdough starter had fallen out of the freezer and shattered and my good friend Sue fed hers last night and brought over a half a jar, ready to go.

And so for the first time in too long there is a loaf of cranberry pumpkin vanilla orange sourdough bread that will be ready by lunchtime tomorrow and we are so looking forward to it.

With berries at breakfast to tide us over till it’s ready.

I’ve been checking the one apricot seedling that had aphids for any sign of them coming back. The plant’s not very big yet; it doesn’t take long to check it over.

This evening was a complete surprise: two leaves at the top were browned, drooping, and curled up. Those were completely healthy two days ago!

I lifted one a bit to try to see–and a little green worm crawled out.

Which is how I learned about leaf roller worms and the moths they turn into. The gardening sites said to destroy all leaves affected.

Well, it already did a good job of that, but here’s my scientific experiment (we’ll see how long it lasts.) If I disturb the growth tip at the end of the branch–and this was the main branch–then its entire length will cease to grow until next spring. No side shoots. One of the idiosyncrasies of apricots. But. Would tearing those leaves off do that, and is the growth tip already damaged.

How would I know if I don’t wait to find out?

And it’s not like the worm stage could have laid eggs.

I will be watching that thing like a–wait. Not a hawk.

Let’s say robin.

Now it’s just a matter of defeating the critters. Wish me luck.

Typing fast, it’s late, we went out for ice cream afterwards…

Went to a concert a friend was playing in. Ran into another friend: someone who got one of my apricot seedlings two years ago, only now it’s about this tall, she said, waving her hand at the top of her head.

Cool!

I caught the rabbit nibbling on my sour cherry blossoms.

Then for several days it avoided this strange new thing.

Today, not so much. And it kept going back in there! Hawkproofing, what’s not to love, right?

Meantime, I had this moment of, hey, that’s it: the infamous white beam! And the gray grooved interior wall in the living room! Ours was exactly like that, only a fair bit darker of a shade in a shaded room, terribly depressing, the only thing I really didn’t like about this house. It took us six years to get rid of it and it may be why I dislike gray on walls so much. Our contractor nailed wallboard over ours, but anyway, here’s a listing that takes me straight back to when we first walked in the door here. Same builder, same floor plan. This one has not been changed much.

Picture number 18. See that white beam connecting the refrigerator side to the oven side?

Eileen, DIL of the then-owners, was in the kitchen, phone in hand, as we and the realtor came in. She saw Richard’s forehead matching up with that board and said to the person on the other end, Oh, THESE people aren’t going to buy this house!

What she also knew was that the master shower had been remodeled to be short enough for her Japanese in-laws. The shower head hit him near bellybutton level, and the stall was small enough that he couldn’t fit in it to kneel down under it.

Within a day or two we had a telescoping shower head. Later, the stall became part of the hallway to the new master bedroom and that beam in the kitchen was the first thing the remodeler took away.

So it was kind of fun to explore our pre-remodel house in those pictures without having to actually live in it again.

My Stella sweet cherry. It looks like it’s going to be a good year for it again. There is an Erva cage protecting its trunk from the rabbit in the bushes.

I had two apricot seedlings last year whose growth tips got killed by a heat wave not long after sprouting–they didn’t make it past two inches tall. But I knew from experience that if I just kept at it, winter would hit the reset button and they would grow normally this spring. A leaf or three was enough till then.

And they did, they are making up for lost time. It’s so gratifying.

Yesterday I saw a couple of leaves along the branch on one that seemed…odd. But they were too small to really see and I figured just let them grow and show themselves, I mean, typically you get a tiny new leaf tip and it grows out to a whole new branch when they’re at that stage.

This evening there were a lot more of them and it definitely demanded more attention.

I squinted. I got close. I found myself keenly aware that the retina surgeon is next week. I took pictures so I could embiggen them, but the camera kept focusing on the actual leaves and the breeze kept moving the thing and this was the best I could get.

I stayed there with my face right in it, trying to see–when suddenly the teeniest, tiniest clear wing went up. I went after it and found myself with green bug squish on my fingers.

There it was. I knew I’d better deal with them fast before they spread. But how? I didn’t have any Safer soap.

I ran in the house and grabbed a Kleenex. I very very gently held it around that fragile little branch and slowly carefully killed the lot of them. What was either black bug poop or bug eggs showed up against the white tissue as well. As far as I could tell I got everything.

I walked around the outside of the house to the city’s lidded compostables bin to get rid of it to try to make sure there were no escapees, then went over my four other apricot seedlings ages 1-5 years but found no trace of the little monsters.

Dr. Google says green aphids.

I am getting me some plant-friendly Safer soap from the local nursery pronto.

I was walking around the back yard to see what the first warm day of Spring had wrought.

The buds on the cherry trees were finally starting to bulge. Their winter had gone on and on, but not today!

The side of the tallest peach towards the pathway of the sun was in its glory with the rest soon to sound the amen.

I was stepping away from it, turned back to see–and was just in time to see a Cooper’s hawk swoop up and land on the telephone line just behind that tree right there in front of me.

If it were our original Coopernicus, who loved to people-watch during breeding season, he’d be about 15 by now; I wondered how many generations this one represented. I stood there with it tolerating me and silently beamed all the love I could its way. I know the tall trees to either side of the yard are gone now; I’m sorry about that. Maybe you never even knew them. I’m glad you’re here. Please stay. Please visit often. I want to have a new fledgling hopping among my amaryllis pots being cute again. I just want you here, and in this moment you are, and I am grateful.

And then too late I went inside and grabbed my phone so I could at least show you where it had been.

Did better today, thanks, everyone.

So how was the eclipse for you all? The only way you could tell there was one here was that the wild rabbit popped out of the bushes as if it were daybreak or dusk and started mowing away at the weeds. Which I thought was pretty funny.

It’s conference weekend. There were two two-hour sessions and one ninety minute one, and Sunday there will be two more two hour ones.

I had finally reached the part where I was doing one color straight across, the exception being the soaring raptor to come and then somehow I got all of that done, too. (Even if crumpled in the embiggened photo.)

The afghan has been taking 4.5 rows an inch, I did nine rows, and the tape measure says that today I added…black hole alert…0″.

Re the conference. During the first two sessions today, there were, as always, beautiful flowers at the podium.

But one kept grabbing my eye. It was an anthurium, and the camera kept hitting it just wrong: in trying to focus the lighting on the speaker, it turned it into a large floral eyeball looking back at the audience in Ukrainian yellow and turquoise, complete with a dark pupil where the spadix split the spathe (plant part definitions in link) up the center.

In the third session it appeared as if someone had moved that one plant. Just a bit.