Six days later… 

My mango tree had two branches when it arrived in December nineteen months ago, twelve by the end of last summer, and it looks like we’ll have forty-five by the end of this.

(Fruit next year, then, right? Right, tree?)

All tucked in: the afghan now covers the feet if you don’t pull it too high up in your lap.

I gave up on sweet-smelling flowers, much less fruit, and pruned the mango a lot last week. It looked so shrunken afterwards but it was overdue. It was supposed to have ripening mangoes by now. It was just sitting there, the limbs getting a bit longer but nothing else, when last year, it was starting to flush in January. January!

Three weeks ago I did, reluctantly, prune just two branches, my first time ever, baby steps towards seeing whether that would change anything. Oh boy did it. One, and actually one that I did not, almost immediately sprang into the flush of growth you see here–but the other one I pruned is shaded by the rest of the tree and is still taking its time.

Now, how you prune a tree when you don’t know what its long term growth patterns are is a mystery. What I’ve seen in its first 18 months: the trunk goes up. Then it curves over. Then the branches hang down in the winter. Then they do a wavy curl back upwards in spring, and whether they harden that way or not, whether the new sprouts that showed up at the top in the last two days will continue upwards for long, I don’t know. It’s not a trunk–it’s a puzzle piece.

Cut the branches to about two feet long the first two years, Fairchild Gardens says.  Okay.

The reddish new growth on the lower left of the tree? I’d read that the trick is to cut just past where there’s a grouping of leaves rather than a single one. I did. There are five new not leaves but full branches from it. I like that rate of return.

Cut where there’s a single leaf you’ll get a single branch. Or so they say.

But I found for the first time and bought a pair (and you do need two layers) of bigger frost covers for the coming winter, and I mean big, like, ten feet tall big. So now I don’t have to worry about it growing larger this year than I can keep protected.

I didn’t prune all the branches (see last photo). Maybe there’s still some last flowering hope? The bees so ardently love those blossoms, and so do I, and now that I know my next-door neighbors have a beehive, I can only imagine what their honey could taste like.

Whatever. I think my tree is suddenly going to be much, much fuller. Next year we will have mangoes.

Dani, the instigator of my mango tree, came over with his love Svetlana with a special gift from his mother in India: actual fresh Alphonsos, sent from the tree he’d grown up with so that we could know what we had growing out there.

He took them out of the jar of rice he’d carried them here in, showing us the traditional storing method. “Here, smell this!”

A deep, wondering (will it smell like last year’s blossoms?) satisfying whiff… I am in awe that he was willing to part with them.

He told us his mom was as enthused as he and I both are that my tree is growing here and doing well. Even if the weather’s been too cool and the tree too young this year for it to produce yet, it did bloom last year. So next year. Now that I know that warmth makes a difference in inducing flowering from the buds, not just in protecting them from harm, I may buy a plastic greenhouse cover for it. There’s one with a zip-down window to keep it from overheating.

We took them outside and showed them the tree and Dani took video, I think to introduce us to his mom, although in the few seconds he had it going I didn’t figure that out fast enough to tell her thank you. To Dani’s mom, if you see this: Thank you so much! And to Dani and Svetlana, Thank you to you, too!

I reiterated my promise that they will get one of our very first mangoes. I can’t wait to share back.

A little more on Alaska: I’d been disappointed I hadn’t seen the twelve-foot grizzly we’d been told was on display at the airport; the kids had said it’s to warn the tourists not to be stupid.

While we were waiting for departure, our last chance, there it was after all. Look closely: past its glass display case there’s a row of seats and at the end closest there’s a man sitting hunched over his cellphone, not knowing he’s being used for scale.

Other than that we did not, to our knowledge, go near a bear. We did, however, see one single crow: at the edge of a bay, fearlessly divebombing the backside of a retreating bald eagle that had flown low over the boat we were disembarking from.

Nope, not a fishing boat, guys, sorry.

More on that tomorrow.

I knew, and yet finding this old photo it suddenly felt like I hadn’t known at all.

The mango tree February 2 last year and now. One year. And hidden in all those leaves, the ends of the branches are steadily working towards a big new burst of growth. My frost covers are barely holding it in at night as it is. 

Okay, that got me to look. Another startled surprise: hey! They’re selling much bigger ones than they used to (84×72 was the max I found last year), alright then, we’re good!

She’s recovering from surgery after breaking a hip but you can’t keep a good woman down–she was going to be ninety and by golly we were going to have a celebration. I think she told the doctor he had to okay it and well, hey, how could he not, then?

So celebrate we did. Ninety and a day. It was quite the party. Old friends came from Oregon for it, her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren came in from everywhere all over. The grandkids blew up balloons one by one to create this dragon that stretched far around overhead while the little greats gleefully popped as many as they could get their hands on. Hey, guys! (as one of the young parents told me afterwards.) Not all of them!

Balloons and tape (and a little hanging wire) can become this?! Creativity is a magical thing.

One of the grandchildren told me, I know your daughter! She was in grad school in Ann Arbor when we were!

And in the slide show there was a photo of Jean and her husband with Conway and Elaine that got me right there. It took me by surprise how fiercely I missed those three, mixed with my gratitude that we still have Jean.

I asked one of her sons if he remembered them and he said why yes of course. I told him their granddaughter had grown up and gone off to college and met and married my son and they had three children now.

That just made his day. Small world.

Jean grew up in Hawaii and misses the fresh-picked mangoes of her youth; she’s an avid gardener and has tried several times to grow them here but always lost the trees to the cold. She’s content now to cheer me on and I love that it matters to her how mine does.

I just figure she can’t go anywhere till I’ve finally had a chance to offer her one.

That was centered when I put that on there… You can tell where the stakes are high.

Quite the windstorm tonight. Cold, too, so the Christmas lights are on and the frost cover is over the mango tree. (A few nights ago it was warm enough that the lights didn’t trigger on till the dead of night.)

That white plant tent put on quite a show, although it’s mostly settled down now; I had to find big rocks to hold it in place, the wind was pushing the usual ones around as if they were barely there.

And then I sat in the warmth inside, grateful for a working furnace and watching it letting its freak flag fly.

It’s been in the mid-30’s the last few nights and I’ve been putting two layers of frost cover over the mango; the leaves are pushing right against the first cover and I know that that could damage them in the cold, lights or no, so I figure this makes them not right up against the outside air. They’re buffered.

So far so good.

Except that last night a small red but tasteless volunteer tomato had fallen near the trunk and I didn’t think anything of it until I woke up in the morning to find a raccoon paw had torn the outer cover; it clearly gave up quickly but still, each nail ripped a small gap and so that one’s useless for using on its own now except on, say, the mandarins, which are a whole lot shorter so far.

Someone asked me today about my raptors and I confessed I hadn’t seen them in awhile–but I knew they were there because the birds were fleeing into hiding and staying hiding a goodly while every day. They saw them even if I didn’t.

I typed out that response and then I got myself over to the couch to go knit.

Right on cue. Not ten minutes after, I heard the dove that had been herded into the window and I turned fast enough to see still-falling gray feathers. The Cooper’s was right under the feeder and it had caught itself a big one.

The hawk stayed eye to eye with me to the count of one, two, three, then quickly wheeled and lifted as if the thing were but a featherweight, tucking its feet and prey in close and flying to the privacy of the trees where the thieving, mobbing ravens wouldn’t know.

I was covering the mango last night, lit by a misplaced flashlight and the Christmas string on the tree, tripped on the novelty of muddy ground, and fell twisting sideways into the tomato bush. No way to know if the pop tent that covered it is damaged; that plant grew right through it like a–okay, kids, ask your folks what a chia pet is. So yeah, a little cushioning there, definitely.

It’s a next-day thing, it always is, but it took me by surprise that when I lifted a more awkward than heavy thing this morning it quite did me in.

I still am having a hard time sitting up straight and I am walking like a ninety-year-old: stooped and slow and watching each step carefully. Must have fallen a lot harder than I thought.

And all day long I’ve been just amazed, going, I only fell and twisted with my own body weight–my daughter’s took it at freeway speed with the force of the weight and momentum of two cars. How does she DO this?! Me, pass the icepacks and I know I’ll be fine in a day or two. Or at worst three.

She amazes me. She’s a trooper.

I covered the mango a lot more carefully tonight. And then, since we hit 39 last night, I put a second cover on top. Just because.

(Mango tree today, lowest, next branch up, and top, rollover notes for details.)

It was a bit of an adventure but it is done: the van is sold and gone.

My next-door neighbor happened to be outside as a crew of strangers were soaping and hosing it down after the grand trek to the DMV and were making it beautiful (wow, they really did–I had no idea it could still look that nice) and I got to tell them how happy I was that it was going to a new family that would make good use of it again, as she added her enthusiasm to the idea. It had served us well.

It felt surprisingly difficult in those last few seconds to watch it being driven away. If I ever see it again on the road, I won’t even know–it’ll have plates (I think it already does) that it never had with us.

How do we get so attached to something so transitory and meaningless, something of no life. And the only answer is because my kids grew up with it.

The neighbor asked what we were replacing it with; I laughed and said, What we are or what I wish? What we are, probably (and I motioned zero). For now, anyway. Too many home repairs to do.

Now, a Tesla. If it were a Tesla I could definitely understand getting too attached to that. The X-model SUV as long as I’m totally dreaming.

Maybe it’s just as well we’ve got a humble little nine-year-old Prius. It’s a good little car and it serves the two of us well.

Still throwing the frost cover over the mango tree at night to keep in the gentle heat from the Christmas lights. I always set several rocks around the bottom edge to help hold it in place.

But several times of late I’ve gone to take the cover off first thing in the morning…and all the smaller rocks are no longer there. Just the bigger heavier ones. We get very little wind around here and particularly not in that spot.

I think something’s gotten acclimated to the lack of nighttime dark in that area, especially given the sweetness of all those enticing blossom clusters. I can just picture a long possum nose pushing under there to check things out or a raccoon casting the first stone.

I put more rocks down tonight. In pairs, too.

My daughter-in-law two days ago: “I love that stage where they’re learning to talk.”

Gam-ma (as Hudson calls me, in two separate words): “Me, too!”

Meantime, back home where things are quieter, the bird feeder had been empty an hour or so while I waited for the sun to get lower; I filled it right before cooking dinner and then we ate.

Meaning the flock was hungry and staying away and then a fair number would all have been coming in at once, starting, often, with the doves. And meaning we were out of sight of the windows when they would have been doing so.

These things do not go unnoticed.

Dishes begun, I had my hand on the door to go out in back when I realized all too late that there was the Cooper’s hawk right there smack dab in the middle of the bare-these-days fence line. The only time I’d seen him of late was when he flew directly overhead last week as a crow dive-bombed him, apparently actually striking once, while its mate chased and chastised and two others joined in half-heartedly from the side but swooped back away before getting any too close. I know they go after him if he’s got a meal in claw and I know they badly want to own his nesting tree next door. If you chance to see a large dark bird swaying unsteadily at the tippy-top of a tall tree, likely it’s a crow or raven playing king of the mountain. But for all their swagger they dare not fly as high as the raptors soar.

He was having none of that. No stealth tonight. This was an in-their-face declaration: I own this. The finches had fled but he had stayed–food was clearly not what was on his mind.

Only, I was moving right at that door and he saw me coming before I saw him.

The moment hung in the air, eye to eye, me surprised and mentally apologizing. I want more hawk sightings, not fewer.

He lifted his wings and was off across the yard in no particular hurry (and I know how fast he can go when he wants to) and in no fear. But there are certain protocols a wild thing must abide by.

And on a smaller scale.

There was yet another honeybee on the frost cover as I took it off the mango tree this morning, but this one was healthy and alive. How do you help a thing that will sting you for it, but I batted once gently at the back of both fabric and bee and it was freed to go.

Yesterday’s flower is nearly spent and its center is beginning to look like these already. The young tree may shed these soon or they may grow to all they could become. I remember Dani exclaiming, when he was encouraging us to plant this tree, “If you don’t try it you will never know!”

I love that I get to find out. And then, finally, to know.