1. That Black Jack fig tree planted March a year ago has a tiny fig for fall growing at almost every leaf junction and one single big spring fig left that the squirrels didn’t quite get to before I clamshelled it away from them.

I’ve never picked a fig before. I assume I wait till it’s darkened (given the variety) and softened, right? Still hard as a rock.

2. Somebody went to the AT&T baseball park in San Francisco a few days ago and put their drink down in the cupholder attached to their seat.

And–sorry, couldn’t get the link to the photo to work, it’s inside a Yahoo group–a fledgling peregrine falcon landed and perched on the edge of that clear plastic cup, its talons huge and in each other’s way. A small red straw poked out between its big yellow toes, its big eyes taking in where it had suddenly found itself.

Well hello!

3. And most important to me. My friend Carol is a knitter whom I get to catch up with every year at Stitches and, when I’m lucky, by random chance at Purlescence during the year. She worked on the recovery post-earthquake and tsunami of the nuclear power plant in Japan (side note to my local friends: that Carol.)

Ever since I met her years ago I’ve been trying to put my finger on just who she reminds me of. And now I know.

Yesterday I was off to see my much-loved Dr. R, the doctor who saved my life in ’03, to wish him well in his imminent retirement. I left early because there was no way I was going to be late for that one.

Which means I had time.

I stepped off the elevator to a very surprised face as someone did a double take at seeing mine. A lupus event damaged my visual memory years ago: I was stuck on, Carol? Wait. That’s not Carol. So, so close, but no. I know I know…!

As the woman in great excitement started catching up with me almost instantly the question was settled. Heather! I hadn’t seen her in 24 years! She’d been a lifeguard at the therapy pool where I met Don Meyer and his wife Amalie the year my lupus was diagnosed.

“Your face is the same! It hasn’t changed!” Heather exclaimed.

Everybody who had attended that now-closed pool had to have a prescription to get in and everybody knew it: for the most part the people there were the types who looked out for each other. It was a good place.

I told her I’d run into Don a month after Amalie had passed and that because of that, he’d had some support in his last five years. (I didn’t add that his son had moved in at the end to take care of him nor about his setting up a blog with our encouragement here and all the interaction he got from that–sometimes the details are too many and need to wait for later, so I’m putting these in here and hoping Heather sees it.)

Amalie was gone. Don was gone. She took that in, sorry to hear it.

I got to see happy photos of her sweetheart and her son.

And I’m just now realizing I can’t believe I forgot to tell her that Conway? Remember my tall, large, stooped, slow-moving, cheerful friend Conway who used to chat with me every day after his exercises? They’d thought he had ALS. Turns out he’d had bone spurs growing into his neck and spine, which they operated on and he started to regain mobility before he died. From a heart attack at that pool. I was across the country at my 20th high school reunion, but I’m told the lifeguards, joined soon after by the paramedics, did CPR for 16 long minutes trying to save him. She might well have been one of them.

If you read this, Heather, his widow moved to San Diego to be near her grandkids. Then she passed. Then her granddaughter there went off to college–and met my son: and they are the parents of my three sweet little grandkids, ages 1, 3, and 5.

Small world.

I got to see Heather today.

Small world.

Who told me who her favorite doctor was, so much so that she drives in from across the Bay to be seen by her.

I asked Dr. R. whom I should go to should my Crohn’s come back; he demurred a bit and asked which others had I seen–at the hospital, the clinic, whom had I liked best?

It had been seven years since my surgeries but Heather had reminded me of that one that had done my throat endoscopy and I said her name.

He was pleased. He told me she was very good and that I would be quite happy with her.

And between my experiences and Heather’s, I knew he was right.

And I probably would not have thought of her first had I not run into my old friend, been recognized by her, and had the time to talk.

The tomatoes. I browsed, ordered, planted seeds in March and transplanted them when the weather warmed up and did all the things you do when you’re pretending to be a gardener. I know you’re not supposed to plant them in the same spot from year to year; I didn’t have a lot of new places to choose from but thought here and here might be okay.

Turns out those were not the best spots for morning sun when the UV is highest; I was looking at them from my height and not seedling level. Direct sun doesn’t hit them till nearly noon. Ouch. Once the June sky gets going, though, I think they’ll grow tall enough to do okay. I just don’t want it to be ironic that this is the year I finally sprang for the heavy-duty Burpee cages.

Monday I think it was I stumbled across three tomato plants the squirrels had planted together by a tree trunk. I had promised myself I wasn’t going to waste water on any junk tomatoes again but look, that’s a cherry tomato on that one! Hopefully that could only be a Sungold offspring. Hopefully.

Except that it was starting to wither for lack of water because, I mean, who knew it was behind there? These had to have spent most of their lives in the shade. Clearly there’s hope for my own.

The next day I found a fourth plant in front of the shed. This one was smaller–the gas cylinder for the grill blocked its light. I moved the thing out of its way.

The one with all its leaves curled and withered is still standing and its tiny tomato is a bit bigger every day. How I don’t know. The other two in that trio bloomed today when they didn’t even have any sign of buds when I first found them. Water is a wondrous thing. I guess I’ll know soon enough if and which plant is worth keeping.

It turns out the way to get tomatoes to grow well is to plant them last year.

I was watching baby squirrel antics for a few moments again this morning when suddenly one fell in a long, long, long twirling head-over-tail-over-head from the tall tree just across the fence. I gasped for what that must have felt like to it, the trunk bent gently away from the little one’s trajectory just just too far away no matter how hard it tried to grab for it. I waited for some sight of it dashing back up into sight and towards safety–the tree, the fence, anywhere.

And then I hoped it was instant rather than at the beak-point of a murder of crows or ravens hours later.

The average lifespan of a squirrel is one single year.

And on that cheerful note, it seemed like a good day to do some of the good intentions that had been waiting on me to finally get around to getting them done. Some coned dk-weight Christmas cashmere that had needed to be hanked up and washed: 660 grams’ worth that would be so, so wonderful, all it needed was the prep time.

Lots of prep time.

I wound eleven hundred yards into one monster hank before my arms had to stop holding up that niddy-noddy. It wasn’t all of it but it was most and definitely enough for the project in mind.

It is drying now. Overdyeing will hopefully be tomorrow. I didn’t want to lift a heavy dyepot after all that. I may well just knit the last of it straight up from the cone, silicone coating from the mill and all.

(Typing the thought out loud settles it…) Naaaah. I’ll hank and wash the rest, too. If I’m going to spend the hours knitting cashmere it’s going to feel like cashmere while I do, not dried hair mousse.

I needed to sit, and spinning is sitting.

Again to the rescue, the 20g mini-cones of cashmere/silk cobweb weight from Colourmart. (Link goes to cobweb silk, not a blend, but hey, for $8 ppd.) I had some Malabrigo Silkpaca in Solis that I loved but wished were thicker and had long thought these two should be put together. I had actually knit them doubled together once already (Hi, Freddy!) but it still made for a very thin yarn. I wanted to try something new with it.

That baby alpaca/silk running through my fingers with that little bit of cashmere/silk added in, first one bobbin’s worth, then the second bobbin, then those two melting together as I plied them–wow. I want the yarns I knit with to always feel like that. If only. I remember all over again why I bought that Silkpaca. Wow.

It was baby squirrel day. Two of them, new around here. Given that the black squirrel didn’t chase them off in a display of dominance (and given whom she was cavorting with earlier in the spring) she was probably their mother.

One fell off the awning. One fell mid-climb halfway up the fence. Twice. One (both are gray, I couldn’t tell them apart) learned the hard way that no you can’t climb a metal downspout but I was impressed at how high it threw itself on it first. One made it halfway up the side of the house before tumbling back down. One knocked over a flower pot and I thought, rather than having him do it again I would try to lessen the temptation to jump at the bird feeder from it by putting it down at the base of the awning pole rather than back up on the table; I put the broom back that leans against the other side of the pole to keep them from climbing at the bird feeder that way.

Which is how I ended up with a very small squirrel landing in that flower pot. We had a sudden explosion of rodent fur and tail and feet (oh THERE they are!) as it tried to figure out how to get out of there.

I don’t know if their nails haven’t fully grown out enough or what, but these two just don’t quite have that whole squirrelocity thing down pat quite yet.

Wait, wait, where did all the white fluff go?

And then his sister hops up on the low ledge to join him at about the 3:00 mark. You can really see the size difference: female peregrines grow to about a third larger than their brothers. When she spreads her wings, there’s that last bit of baby fluff showing.

But her brother took a flying leap today to the upper ledge and got to see the world below that part of city hall for the first time. The camera operator noted in an email that he took a good long look before running down the ledge and jumping back down into the nest box. Home sweet home.

For just a bit longer.

Today just felt like the day.

It was also the day I decided to test this mobility thing after a month of staying away from driving. I went to the dry cleaners. I dropped off a return at the UPS store. I went home and checked my messages, rested, ran another errand, went home and checked my messages.

Picked up Richard and asked him to drive now; sure, no problem.

He found himself turning right on a whim and we went out for ice cream because the day just needed something frivolous.  Came home and the first thing I wanted to do was check for messages.

When we walked in the door together there was a beautiful dove on its back on the patio, its chest glowing peach in the fading sun. It surprised me. Its fragile legs were red, its splayed feathers a riot of white and black.

Its closed eyelids a bright light blue.

All this color, not such a drab little bird after all; who knew? But what a way to see it so vibrantly. It must have hit that window hard.

There was no sign of the hawk. And a Cooper’s won’t come back for something it didn’t kill–it is not a scavenger.

I was not about to invite the ravens around.

Richard called his dad to catch up a bit, and in the course of the conversation I asked DadH how long it takes if I… I…don’t want to dig in the spot in a year or two and get totally grossed out. I knew he’s been an avid gardener.

Six months, a year at most, he encouraged me.

And while we were talking that message came in.

I knew…

I went outside. I picked up the shovel. I immediately hit rocks. Lots of rocks. The previous owner had made a pathway of them and many many years later they went down pretty far and maybe they always had.

I wanted to see how far. I didn’t care. There was sunlight and there was room and I’d long wanted that spot and I wanted to make it work and if I had to dig under every stone by hand to pull it out I was going to do it, and I did it. There was a large root from the tree cut down over a year ago; I worked around it. I spent about forty-five minutes working those stubborn embedded determined hard gray planet-bones out of there and putting them aside to where, later, they would help hold the water in place for me and work with me.

It all looked like the scattered weeds and grass and dirt on the right before I started.

Yes I’m still supposed to take it easy. But sometimes, sometimes, hard physical productive work that anticipates the bounty of the future is exactly what life requires of us.

And then when I finally had that small gash in the earth wide enough (about 40″) and deep enough and soft enough to add soil to and plant my pea seedlings in, then, at last, it felt it was time to go to work on that dove’s final resting place. I took a few steps to the left and behind the mango tree. Its roots wouldn’t be that far over yet (and oh good, they weren’t) but eventually the little bird could offer it sustenance.

Here, moss grew on the smooth surface here and there.

The spade slid right in to its full depth. Such a different experience.

And again. Then I put it down, walked back to the patio, and unlike my usual careful measures picked the dead dove up in my bare hands to take it to its new place.

It was so beautiful. It was so soft. I was sorry it was gone but grateful to it for how it would feed my fruit. Then for all that I’d dug the dove was so long that I wondered if it would fit in there gracefully and with a pang I wanted its spot to do it honor.

Somehow the space was wide enough after all. I put it in deep and packed the soil back around it. I put a bit of the moss back on the top and watered the spot to settle it all in. Then over to the peas.

The message. My uncle, my love of an uncle, the one who invited us to stay at his house any time we were in town, the kindest man you could ever hope to meet, quietly let go of his pancreatic cancer and the stroke that had made his last few days all the harder and with his family around him, slipped away this evening to where he waits to embrace us all. As he always has.

The Washington Post put the story on their front page within an hour. Maybe they’ll correct the number of grandkids by morning.

The Salt Lake Tribune’s, here.

An Indian Free peach, the one peach tree I’ve got covered in birdnetting. Never used the stuff before other than in pre-netted cages and tents. The new branches, of course, start tiny and grow right through the stuff or curve around in a balled-up wad of leaves while trying to, making for a weird shaping to come–and harvest isn’t till September. Any voices of experience, feel free to chime in here because I’m only pretending I’m knowing what I’m doing.

The Fuji is far too big to cover. I just do my plastic-clamshell thing to fruit as high up as I can reach and call it good.

There was a small squirrel sitting on the fence today eating one of those very unripe apples. He flicked aside the first of the peel, but other than that he ate and ate till that entire small fruit was gone. Then he took an Olympian leap to nearly the top of the tree for another.

This is a far cry from that apple tree’s early days where the squirrels would pick one take one bite ick no toss pick bite repeat till they’d stripped the entire thing in a day. I guess the long drought has impressed on them that food is not something you ruin. This is the first year of plenty in their lifetimes.

Meantime, I hanked up eight cones of yarn today. Scoured two but reluctantly decided to wait on the others till I had more space for them to dry in, but I got the chore part done. I wound up three that had already been scoured.

That, and I knitted.

Because last night I was at the wheel and the drive band broke. Really broke. Well that one’s done. I asked Richard, “Do we have any string in this house…?”

Unscoured tightly twisted merino? You bet I considered it, but no. No spinning today. And so I put my Kromski niddy-noddy (nope, not seeing it on their site but trust me, it’s a gorgeous piece of wood and well engineered) to good use and felt a great sense of accomplishment.

Spun another skein like yesterday’s. One more of that and I think the red sparkly will be all used up and then I’ll put the last of the plum with the last of the purple.

Saw an overly hormonal squirrel doing flips and backflips and loop-the-loop leaps, jumping around again and again in this one spot of grass-free fine dirt that he flung high in the air as he did his little acrobatic shtick for the ladies. Another spray of dirt and another. I own the air! I own the ground! I make them one!

While I sat watching out the window thinking, well, I guess that answers my question whether I put enough water there for the squash to sprout.

I was thinning the Fuji apple tree–a task I have never had to do before, but this year for the first time the tree is loaded–when I learned that a cluster is more connected within itself than to the tree, so instead of reducing three to one I suddenly had none of those particular ones for September.

Oops.

The tiny ones at the bottom are from the year-old columnar apple, which started off with nearly as many apples as leaves. I figure one for us, one for the neighbor, one for backup and that’s plenty for the little thing to have to do for now.

Meantime, with all the yarns I’ve plied on my wheel of late, still this silk leaped out of my stash and onto the needles for now. I figure it has its reasons.

Birds at the feeder. I walk out of the room, think, wait, I need my shoes, turn around and walk back across the room to where my clogs are, in front of the sliding glass door…

Which is how I was close enough to the glass to have the patio overhang not in the way of seeing the raven doing a steep dive down and right back up again right in front of the path of the oncoming hawk that ignored it and came zooming in across my yard and around the bird feeder a few feet away from me, wings and tail wide at the turn to brake, and then away! in hot pursuit of some other bird altogether. Exit! Stage Right!

Whether the raven was trying to defend territory, if it suddenly saw and pulled out of the way of the hawk just in time or whether it was trying to steal prey when there wasn’t any yet or what it was trying to do I do not know, but the whole thing made quite a show. If ever so briefly.

And then I realized I still needed to put the other clog the rest of the way on.

——

(A side note. There was an update. The resident geek just found and deleted the new Related Posts feature from above the comments for me–it was driving me crazy. I’ll link back to my own posts if I want to offer a backstory, I don’t need an algorithm thinking it knows how to do that.)

And then there were three.

But only two of the baby peregrine falcons. One egg never hatched, one only survived long enough to hatch, but the other two? Doing fine.

Here are the little fluffballs now.

Somehow, “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” instantly sprang to mind.

She was tucked in and snoozing before I pointed my phone at her. Given that a mourning dove will drop a small twig and call it a day on the nest building, I was wondering a moment there if we were going to have an egg roll. Or egg drop soup, anyway.

And yes, the mandarin’s tent is inside a cage these days after a raccoon pushed in one side but couldn’t get through.

Almost ripe.

Let’s see, that’s 278, 226, 222, 224: the yardage on the four hanks aside from the finished cowl. Out of the 200g of the closeout dark brown merino/silk cobweb, I have 76g left (cone excluded). It’s the smallest amount among the three colors, so, 124g of that=950 yards finished yarn=I have roughly 575 yards left I can ply in this combination for a total of 1525 yards that knits up nicely on 4.5 or 5mm needles and then that’s all of that there can ever be.

(Yeah, the cowl probably took some out of the equation except that Colourmart nearly always sends more than the amount stated. I didn’t weigh this time before starting though so I don’t know.)

I have no idea why it’s so important to have that yarn all ready to knit up but it is and so I’m spinning it. That sense of anticipation of discovery is keeping me going on the brown yarns against the brown spinning wheel against the brown rug with the brown piano in the background. I don’t want to stop till that one cone is empty and I can declare this stage done.

Let me distract you from all that with a photo of a hawk trajectory.

My English Morello cherry at the end of last summer and in today’s rain. Compare to Wednesday’s photo. That’s not camera angles, it really has grown that much in three days.

All that and cherries, too.

Over at San Jose City Hall, the peregrine falcons had four eggs. Two hatched, and as nothing happened and nothing happened the parents started to push one and then the other remaining egg away.

And then pulled them back towards them after awhile.

And pushed again. One was a maybe? It just seemed that the two that were out were it.

Six days after the first hatching, one of those two semi-rejected eggs started showing a line of white (you can see it at the 2:20 mark)–and then poof, all at once (at about 4:38), there it is! Its siblings are older and more able to be aggressive at getting food from their parents but this one just might prove to be a survivor after all.

Pretty please with cherries on top.

Just out for a stroll on a beautiful day…

A squirrel cowered under the picnic table. I looked at it, back up to the fence, and decided to let nature take its dinner course and eased quietly away from the windows so as not to interfere.

Coopernicus swooped in to the top of that table among the amaryllis buds and blossoms–and with the hawk now out of its sight, the squirrel popped right out from the leg of a chair and back to sniffing for full seeds on the patio amongst the pecked-out hulls.

With his tail and wings tucked in behind him that Cooper’s hawk didn’t look much bigger than that squirrel. I know he sometimes goes after them. But no–I guess squab was on the menu again tonight, not ribs, and after a full minute’s consideration the hawk turned for something on the wing, and away.