Pulse oximeter’s lowest reading last night: 90%. Way better.

Saw a black squirrel on the fenceline just beyond our property today where the fences intersect and its behavior caught my eye. It was both relaxed, laying down there, and…not. Its legs dangled lazily in the record heat (90! In October!) while its head kept bobbing up and down.

Gauging, gauging, gauging. It stood up quickly and

“HOLY COW!”

Richard, working in the next room: “What’s holy cow?”

It had taken a massive leap to the neighbor’s tree and that tree was ten, maybe even twelve feet away from it. There was the slight arc upwards and a swiftly-sharpening arc downwards as it sank, front feet stretched far forward tail straight back. Whether it had enough momentum to manage to desperately grab on near the bottom of that big tree or not I couldn’t tell because my fence was in the way but it was sure going to be a close call if it did.

Y’know? All it had to do was amble down alongside my cherry tree and the tree it coveted would have been right there.

You just don’t have to do it the hard way.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings I was not home to do my usual watering but for just long enough to keep the pots of tomato plants going and I was off.

There was a one-plant surprise party for me Monday way across the yard over next to the cherry tree: having weeded there last Wednesday, I know it wasn’t there then.

Okay, then, squirrels do bury food for the winter, but squirrels don’t even like tomatoes–they just steal the juices out and toss the rest.

Curious little mystery. It’s a vigorous little grower, maybe we’ll even get a harvest out of it.

Meantime, thinking about yesterday’s post some more, I realized that I have no idea what time my car actually got done and my showing up to ask might have been right as they finished. In my hurry to finish the post and call it a night I neglected to mention that the mechanic had asked me for my cell number so he could tell me when it was done.

I explained the hearing impairment (I’d forgotten my bluetooth pendant to my Iphone) and that in that noisy store, I would never hear it ring; I asked if it would be possible to text instead?

He thought about that for a nanosecond and decided, with no question in his voice, a firm Yes. He added quickly that it would be from his personal phone, not the store’s (I’m sure so that I would get it despite its being an unfamiliar number.)

Now, we have a cell plan with unlimited free texting, which they don’t offer anymore; we’re grandfathered in, along with two of our kids and my parents. This guy probably pays by the text and he was willing to offer that out of his own personal pocket to a customer. He didn’t have to do that–and in the moment that he did, there was a certain joy in his face in the offering.

They’ve got a good guy there.

I got two notes back from Costco customer service this evening. The first was an automated, we don’t answer after hours but we will get back to you tomorrow.

The second, sent soon after by someone who had read it anyway and clearly had felt compelled to answer, was a note thanking me and saying they would forward my email to the manager so that Luis could get the recognition he deserved.

And now I was the one who was smiling. May that little moment he created not be buried but come to full fruition for him.

…Besides, it wasn’t up against the fence like the others were.

You know what I was thinking yesterday? I was thinking I needed a good hawk sighting. It had been awhile and I just really needed one.

Well, so do something about it.  And so I filled the second feeder, which I haven’t done much lately; seed in the summer can add up. But it does bring the birds closer in towards the house.

Three finches made a wild scramble off that thing this afternoon and I looked up.

Coopernicus wasn’t trying to chase them. He was simply showing up. He settled down on the nearest tree branch where he could get a good view of that now-prey-free feeder–but also of me.

I communed, he perhaps tolerated, but he was there, watching, considering me and my presence below. I wondered if it was even the same male I had known across these years or if it was his offspring. Hard to know from the distance, but by the behavior, I would say it was him and by the size, definitely male. I radiated all the love I could in thanks, hoping it would somehow make him want to visit more often, and he stayed there looking back at me for several wonderful minutes.

If it was Coopernicus I could have swiveled my gaze to a spot where a finch was hiding in the elephant ear leaves and he would have understood and followed and gone to it if he was hungry–he’s done that before–but there was none; they’d all gotten away safely, and if he’d been hungry he would have followed them in the first place rather than coming to me.

And yet he came.

I felt like all I’d done was give him a half-reason to.

And then having done what I’d asked for, he showed great finery of tail and wing at last and was off to his own matters.

I’m too tired to think straight, so I think I’ll just leave you with the fish cannon that’s supposed to help salmon get past some of the higher dams on the Columbia River. Just a little more testing first.

Oh and. The Copyright Office has decreed that when a macaque monkey steals your camera and takes a selfie, no copyright accrues to the photographer (David Slater in this case).  I’m glad he was able to retrieve his equipment, at least.

That face is straight out of Disney.

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.

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.

The promised otter pictures. (The computer is being quite insistent that they post mostly backwards, sorry.)

Peeking out from under its blankie.

Nope nope nope not getting up.

Alright, I’ll get up (dragging its blankie behind the rock for safekeeping.)

Looking more like Smokey the Bear.

You talking about me? (I’m thinking of Don as I type that–that is so something he would have said.  I miss him, and if you read this, Cliff, I hope things are going well for you.)

Smoothing its fur against the glass on its way by as the camera tries to keep up.

Giving us a good look at its flippers.

Side notes: sea otters tend to keep their paws above water to keep them warm because that’s the only part of them that isn’t well insulated and they hold paws when they want to keep from getting separated in the current.

We gotta hold hands and stick together in this whorled.

Him, a few days ago: So what do you want to do for the Fourth?

Me: It would be fun to drive down the coast, dip our toes in the ocean. Wait–beach traffic. Holiday traffic. Never mind.

One of the facts of life here is that there are a very few very tight windy roads over the mountains between the Bay Area and the coast.

So he proposed going back to the Aquarium. The southern route around wouldn’t be bumper-to-bumper. (Just a little, it turned out.)

Sure! I was quite surprised. How about… (Googling for the perfect almond pastry.) Maybe throw in a bakery exploring?

Sure!

Except the place I wanted to try was closed today so we didn’t get to find out if the almond utter nirvana described per Yelp was true or not. But we had to love a place whose first name was Parker.

Our year’s membership was ending July 30th and at $275 to renew with guest passes again, that would likely be it for awhile. Hang in there, little bakery, we’ll get there someday.

Two weeks ago I was focusing on seeing everything; this time I was taking a lot more photos so as to bring more of them home with me.

I took a picture of the California red-legged frog for all my fellow knitters: our mascot, local version.

The Sunfish photo came out surprisingly well, given how dark the tank is and that there’s no flash allowed. But it moves so very very slowly that the Iphone got it. That’s almost the whole fish–there’s a slightly scalloped edge just to the right there, feather-and-fin style and you’re done.

I asked the receptionist to verify that our passes were good through the 30th. She checked, grinned, and said, August 30th.

August?! Really?!

Yes!

She so loved being able to say that. Sometimes they offer a baker’s dozen of months when you sign up for a year and I guess since we’d come in twice in two weeks they were out to make us happy and she had great fun surprising us.

Well then. We just might have to come back to explore Parker Lusseau when it’s not a holiday. We’ll see. Oh and? The Aquarium employee who told us last time that the  place starts emptying out 4:ooish? Genius. We had the whole upper level of the sea otter exhibit to ourselves and that has NEVER happened. …Well, till the one in view woke up from its nap, whereupon a family came upstairs to see. Their kids were adorable.

Otter with its blankie pictures tomorrow.

On a lighter note of utter randomness, just because I’m intrigued: have you ever heard of a Pallas cat before? I sure hadn’t. Here’s a short video of one in the wild captured on camera.

And here’s a long one of some of them climbing through jack o’ lanterns. The size of housecats, tails like someone put hairbands down them, profiles like a monkey’s, fur like an oversized chinchilla, and movements like a squirrel. Too cute.

(Ed. to add, oh wait, did I just post about cat videos on the Internet?)

Our one-year membership at the Monterey Bay Aquarium has five weeks left on it and we’d wanted to see their Tentacles exhibit while it was still on.

This morning: “Do you want to go?”

“Sure!”

“What time?”

“Let me get this load out of the washer and we need to fill the car.”

And then, wild and crazy young things that we are, we threw a few cans of fruit juice in the car and took off down the coast. Got some serious blankie knitting done while he drove.

The GPS on his phone was misbehaving so we used mine, knowing there had been road construction. But his is the one that has a charger in the car, so I was down to only getting a few pictures once we got there.

Nautilus can naut(tell)ilii.

Sardines are the silver jewelry of the sea.

We watched a cuttlefish that kept pulsing dark purple in waves down its body, S-curving around a lighter almost yellow at its edges and in time to the waves of the water, the darker area matching the (lava rocks?) at the bottom of the display. There was a white anemone nearby and hiding in it another cuttlefish had gone white to match. Put a color or pattern next to them and watch them change to try to vanish into it to prey and not to be prey.

Richard got some pictures I’ll have to share later of the horned and tufted puffins–I was delighted to be within inches of some of the birds that our daughter saw on a recent boat ride in Alaska.

But quite a few people in the crowd around us cracked up when I mentioned that the tufted puffins looked like Donald Trump’s hair, they really  do.

We drove through the artichoke fields of Castroville on the way home and found ourselves a farmstand and came away with the very freshest and a jar of their artichoke marinara sauce. It was clear the place had seen many a tourist, in that there was a large sign showing how to eat their crop–thistle show’em.

We came home too tired to cook. Tomorrow is soon enough.

Thing the first.

I was delayed getting out the door to knit night: I think this is one of the babies I saw earlier that were still a little iffy at this landing thing.

The little finch had just hit the window and oh goodness I almost stepped on her coming in from watering my tomatoes, not expecting a bird on the mat.  She didn’t move, even when my foot came within a tailfeather.

I didn’t want her to be eaten by squirrels looking for an easy snack so I decided to give her some time and if she was still immobile in ten or fifteen minutes, I would lift her up to the warm wooden bird feeder (not the metal one) for the night; I did that once before for a finch that did finally fly off in the morning. I took her picture, no flash, and the near eye that had been shut tight squinted open just a bit in response.  She’s still with us! Oh I’m so glad.

I waited, I gave her yet a little more time, but she held the same pose.  Well then. I walked around the house to scoop her up from behind as gently as humanly possible and with the least fright, but as I stepped onto the patio she saw me this time and with eyes wide open now stood up at attention. She fluttered just slightly, brushing against that window one last time but in a way that could not cause harm, then veered around the danger that I represented to her and flew off to the safety of the trees. For all that she’d gone through in the last half hour she’d come out okay.

Thing the second.

Someone was at Purlescence tonight whom I haven’t seen in a goodly while. I had no idea she was coming; we threw our arms around each other for joy.

She’s been fostering a toddler since his infancy about a year and a half ago.

His circumstances would hurt anybody’s heart but for the lucky break he got when he was placed in that home. One bio parent will never be in the picture again and the other has spent most of the baby’s lifetime in jail and has changed nothing from what landed them there.

She gave no details other than that there’s been delay after delay while Bio parent has not been conforming to the social workers’ requests and that their supervisors think that’s just peachy. My friend thinks it’s pretty clear that that sweet little boy, so innocent of how his life began, will be given back to that parent, ending his relationship with his big sister and the only parents he’s ever known, who love him and dearly want the best for him, and it is such a wrenching thing that however it turns out they’re giving up fostering after this.

I so hope they succeed at adopting him.

The eye towards the window had squinted but in good time the fledgling saw clearly what she needed to see and she made it to safety.

Somehow, and I can’t quite explain it other than that it’s what I’ve got to go on, that small persevering bird gives me a sense of hope for my friend’s adorable little boy.

But meantime, I’m praying hard.

The squirrels got one of my Yellow Transparents, almost ready to pick but still quite at the sour stage: I found a hollowed-out carcass of pale green skin, utterly deflated.

They actually ate the apple!  Rather than the usual one-bite-and-toss.  Maybe the lack of abundance got to them.

But what I care most about. Something big had climbed it again and bent it bigtime… I went back inside, grabbed the cinnamon, and shook it over my peaches both inside and outside the clamshells (not all fit in), highly aware that I should have thought of that sooner.

Checked back this morning and this evening and there was still a nice even dusting, untouched by so much as a breeze, on top of both plastic and fruit.

One more week, I just ask for one more week on that tree. I wonder if the cinnamonyness will permeate the peaches; with the Meyer lemons next to them, all I need now is a piecrust bush.

Not sure I want to ask how ovenbirds got their name, though.

A stick in the ground and a year and a half. It amazes me.

That middle peach didn’t fit in there, but the boxes clearly give the critters nothing to hold onto to get at it. Looking good.

(Moving slowly. Still a bit under the weather.)

Oh, and before I forget: a few really cool pictures here of the fledgling falcons among the skyscrapers of San Francisco (scroll over a few to that ninth one. Perfect.)  There were three females…and now there are two, who’ve had much better luck coordinating landing on a wing and a prayer.

Skipped out on Purlescence tonight due to a sore throat–a mild one, but why share. Took it easy today.

Re the free range plum, I’m amazed it’s still there, given that I didn’t have enough clamshells to cover them all. (And that clamshelled one might need same tape for when the raccoons show up.)

Things are coming along.

Oh and: this school of rays photographed by National Geographic is amazingly beautiful. But the background music–I’m debating whether it should be nananananananananananananananana BATMAN!!!

Or Jumping Jacks Flash.