“We’re going to have to have a do-over on dinner,” as I came back in from mulching some more fruit trees.

Say what? He looked up, questioning.

I had only ever seen sprawling plants and flowers and somehow I had missed that the sugar snap peas were not only there but needed to be picked, like, now. So at 8:30, nine of them got stir-fried and I probably should have picked the smallest ones too but I was trying not to be greedy.

I’d bought a packet of seeds to maybe do nothing with; a half dozen went into the dirt below the cherry tree to catch any runoff and try to make it useful rather than just having the water go to the prickly plants with the tall flower stalks that I’m forever thinking of simply ripping out and being done with. I didn’t plant more peas because I didn’t want to commit to having to water them for their own sake.

They did grow, though, even when the ground was cracked and dry-looking, hidden well enough that you had to look for them to find them, and eventually the pea tendrils tried to grab onto those stalks that blocked a lot of their sunlight–but mostly the plants just flopped around on the ground. I figured they were putting nitrogen in the soil for next year’s tomatoes and that that was reason enough for them.

I saw a squirrel nosing around back there yesterday and thought, well, if there was anything there there isn’t now.

Today, marveling: How did it not devour these?

I dunno, but we sure did!

A band-tail pigeon a few days ago, briefly away from its flock, dwarfing the mourning doves. I saw a spotted towhee today, all dressed up and ready to go.

Still not up to getting much done (I tried not to breathe on the plumber yesterday) but the fever part seems over. I knitted for the first time since this started and it felt like a coming home.

Walked around the yard near dusk and breathed in all that growing life. The sweet pea seeds I pushed into the dirt just downstream from the cherry tree in hopes that something more useful than weeds might take up the overflow? Other than an occasional handheld gallon out of guilt, I totally left them on their own. Bad gardener.

They’re blooming. Not a bite nor blemish on them anywhere.

Our Stella had a single cherry growing in a spot where a clamshell wouldn’t easily snap over it, so I doused it in grape Koolaid and hoped. It certainly wasn’t going to rain–they say you have to reapply the stuff after rain.

It rained. Not that I’m complaining. At all.

Given that the first branches of cherries had been stripped while still tiny and green and I would have thought far from tasty, it amazed me to get to watch this one fruit gradually turn big and yellow in anticipation of turning red and openly taunting the wildlife. (The rest are in clamshells, and the critters have still managed to reach in at a few of those so I reinforced them with Koolaid, too.)

And then of course yesterday’s .63″ happened. I still had that same mug of fake-grape in the kitchen and when the skies let up a moment I took it outside to reapply to the otherwise-unprotected cherry.

Of course it was long gone.

One of those days when I ran All The Errands.

And got to see a Red-tailed hawk soaring overhead. My day was complete.

Oh wait, not quite. Almost forgot the YouTube link: we have three female falcons this year at San Jose City Hall and fledge watch is coming up soon.

The second time it happened, I knew exactly what it was.

But that first time a few days ago I could not for the life of me figure out that large bright white blob in the air (definitely not part of the tree in the background) hovering, hovering, now wobbling up and down just above the far end of the fence over on the neighbor’s side. It was almost round but for that one part–I willed it to come closer so I could see what that was.

Yonder squirrel stumblingly, awkwardly obliged.

It was a masterpiece of a huge white rose, just a showstopper that some gardener had clearly been proud of, with the sun dazzling it full on against the backdrop of the small black animal whose small face it utterly dwarfed. He finally stood still a moment halfway down my property line up there and tried to eat that thing. Like a teenage boy with a pizza–no, make that a Chez Panisse banquet, look at that presentation–all to himself.

One upper petal was askew from the otherwise still-perfect formation as he chomped on the center. He had plucked the entire rose from the bush quite nicely. He looked for all the world like he was holding a whipped cream pie against his face.

I have roses, and I’ve never seen a squirrel do such a thing before–they simply don’t eat them. Trying to figure out if it could be the drought? But then why…? Maybe all that rain in December led to a bumper crop of young that can’t find anything to eat now.

The second time, he went for a flower half the size. Don’t bite off more than that with which you can leap.

The Black Jack fig tree has suddenly, in the last week, turned a noticeably deeper shade of green and the leaves have finally started getting bigger as we’ve gotten closer to summer sun. It had been in kind of a suspended animation for awhile, I imagine waiting for its roots to heal and grow after I had had to cut them with pruning shears to free them from each other. Having bought it when bare root season was over and it was still stuck in that sheath, it had come severely root bound, the ends curled back up somewhere inside that box. (Hey, ten bucks. The right variety. We could work with it.)

It’s looking a lot happier now.

The silk oak next door (hey, Wikipedia, what the heck is a “dry rainforest environment”?) that the hawks have raised their young in year after year but that flowers during nesting season, inviting raven aggression: two of the flowers fell into my yard today and out of curiosity I picked them up and sniffed. I expected perfume. Not so much. But the colors clearly are enough to get the attention of many types of birds, and when the big ones are away the finches play.

The Indian Free peach tree two weeks ago and today: clearly, we won’t have to wait a very long time for it to reach out to Adele. I am so looking forward to that and I love how this grows.

And… We lost our one single tiny green mango today. I think it snagged on the frost cover as I was taking it off this morning. The tree isn’t done flowering yet, so maybe we’ll get a second chance.

Definitely next year we will.

There’s a clamshell, it’s intact, it’s right where I put it…

…And all the cherries that were growing inside it have vanished. Just from that one. But the uncovered single cherry below that box is still there–go figure. The branches haven’t broken, so I figure a squirrel may have learned how to pry it apart just enough (while snapping on its paw) but I haven’t seen them so much as touch that tree. Clearly that fruit would have to be really ripe before they’d get over their dislike of the cinnamon I sprinkled around it.

Maybe the raccoon simply sat on the fence and pulled it to him? It’s at the top of the tree and right at that height. Time to tape the clamshells shut.

Anyway, so, the outside faucet has been failing gradually for some time and had gotten to the point that it just spins without catching on its stem while dripping crazily from around the stem and out the top. So not cool in a drought. You could only turn it on by pushing down hard on the screw as you twist–and then where the hose connected, it was stripped enough there too that we put plumber’s tape but still, that part dripped, too.

The big guys didn’t have a replacement. The little guy, at Barron Park Plumbing Supply, who really knows his stuff and would rather help you than oversell to you, said to me, “Wow–that’s a tiny one.” He thought a moment and said not only did he not have it, he couldn’t think of anyone that would. Here though is what I could buy and do and, as he continued to muse thoughtfully, here’s why I wouldn’t want to do it–I would have five, maybe six uses before it would do damage, completing the stripping. It was my choice, if I really needed it working right now.

I needed a better idea. He wrote out four names and numbers of people he personally recommended, and I knew if he said so I couldn’t go wrong. It would probably run me in the ballpark of $100, $150, he said. (Better than wasting all that water!)

And we will need to call one of them. But for now Richard kluged it with a piece he thought would help. To my great relief the faucet still drips but only a very little and not where the hose connects because that’s at the new piece. I propped a small dyepot underneath and while watering the cherries, the apples, the pear, the peaches, and the mango, I didn’t catch enough to water the potted fig tree with–that’s a huge change.

So tonight, after two weeks of not being able to turn that thing on (and of being really really glad it rained a week ago), and after it was 91 withering degrees today, I finally watered my trees.

Next step. Buy mulch.

The mango with a dab of unsweetened grape Koolaid solution to keep the birds away. The ants were starting to be a problem on the flowers; I sprinkled cinnamon around the base of the trunk and over one flower cluster where one was being obstinate about not letting go and they all disappeared and have not come back.

We learned about honeybees when I was a kid, complete with a field trip to a building that had an active hive going and a bee tunnel to outside at the back of the place so as to keep kids who have no sense and might have allergies and any possibility of stingers as far from each other as possible.

I learned that insects, of all things, dance to talk. Honeybees, anyway.

And so here I was Sunday night, flashlight in hand, looking for the center of the frost cover to get it up and positioned over the Alphonso mango tree just so when movement below caught my eye.

I got down on my knees to see.

There was a honeybee on the ground, looking, frankly, dead. Or maybe it was just too cold. But there was another one walking in rapid ovals or figure eights, I’m not sure, and wiggling just so at intervals while another honeybee circled in the air a little above. I remembered that the longer from one end of the dance to the other, the farther away from the hive the coveted flowers that had been found.

I watched. It was a very short back and forth, back and forth. Here be food (or maybe a good place to swarm to, I’m not sure). Come.

And I noticed that it was doing its dance right next to a clear white Christmas light resting against the ground looking brighter than I had noticed before. But then how often do I stare at the filament part in the dark. It offered concentrated warmth as the temperature dropped around it.

I shined my flashlight at the dancer and seemed to distract it a split second but it went back to its important work. I wondered if my tree lights flicking on automatically had confused the bees as to when the sun was supposed to set.

That morning I’d found I think four honeybees in a tight faces-in-together cluster on that cover with another coming in to join them and another over thataway. Whether I interrupted the early stages of a swarm or not I don’t know, but they didn’t mind my sending them away by, as always, patting the back of the fabric as gently as I could to help free their legs from it.

I continued covering the mango for the night and at the commotion of the movements above the ones that had missed nighttime roll call at the hive moved along to places unseen.

They say that honeybees are placid and not inclined to sting. Finally, having seen it again and again right in front of me (not to mention my hand hitting where those stingers are), I believe it. And I feel privileged to have been the wallflower watching the dance in the night.

He banked left, then quickly right, twirling around at the last like an Olympic ice skater’s grand finale just outside the window. Seeing that he’d gotten our attention, (me: Did you see that? Husband: Yeah I saw that) he nodded, hesitated a moment, and then went back out in the manner he’d come in.

Oh. Right. The birdfeeder’s gone empty–I’ll get right to it, thanks.

So yes, the Cooper’s hawk is fine after being attacked by that raven yesterday. One can only marvel at his timing with the thought, as if it were a wild creature’s intention, that it was nice of Coopernicus to let us know.

We were just sitting down to dinner when the phone rang with a spammer and we heard the thwack against the window in the other room. Interrupted anyway, I got up to check.

No sign of a downed bird but there was our male Cooper’s hawk perched on the netted cage that covers the blueberries. He was very nonchalant about my approaching across the room from my side of the glass: just an old familiar sight.

No sign of a dove in his talons, though; it must have gotten away. A few times a finch has managed to tuck wings in tight and zoom into that cage and need rescuing (must have hit just the right, most stretched-out portion of the netting) so as he looked down and around under there I wondered if that’s where some little escapee had gotten off to. (Nope.)

A large winged shadow passed by from somewhere I couldn’t see overhead. The ravens know that if they land in my backyard I will go after them with a squirt gun, and so they don’t. He looked up but seemed to ignore it.

And then he didn’t. And suddenly there was our Cooper’s hawk flying off and bam! There was a raven attacking him from behind!

Get OFF me you doofus there’s NO prey to steal! as they zoomed together towards the neighbor’s trees and out of sight all too fast for me to see if there was any harm done. Flying strongly, at least, and he’s a good deal more muscular and equipped for hunting than they.

I think he’ll be just fine.

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.

February. I planted the Indian Free two months ago. That was then. (This first picture is when it was just starting to sprout.)

This is now. I wasn’t going to let it fruit this first year but after shedding the others it was determined to grow that one peach, already bigger than the ones on the Babcock (which had started flowering a week earlier and will be ripe two months earlier), so I let it be.

Note to the squirrels: don’t even think about it.

So I lamented that the hawk hadn’t come up to the picnic table to say hi up close since we’d cut down and replaced the trees on the side.

Well, why hadn’t I said I’d been missing him? And so suddenly there he was. Perched on the back of the chair, all but waving a talon hi on the other side of the window as we took in each other’s presence on this fine warm (91 degree) day. He fluffed out his feathers.

I loved how he was framed by five, soon to be six blooming amaryllises; he started craning his head around and–if I’d only had my camera!–looked straight up into a deep red one bowed down just above his face.

When he was ready to go, he turned and lightened the load as birds often do before lifting off.

And the Red Lion will bloom a little brighter next year for it.

The hawk had clearly just had a meal because he hadn’t quite finished cleaning his feathers yet. He fluffed them out a bit, content.

The bird feeder had been empty for a few hours and I’d been waiting for the sun to be less intense before going out to refill it–and so there was no potential prey in sight but to look at him that’s not what he was wanting just then anyway.

It was clearly the male of the Cooper’s pair and as in so many years in the past, it was nesting season and he had stopped by for a visit: claiming that fence was a territorial display, definitely, but he was people watching, too–he’s always liked to do that this time of year.

With the olive and buckthorn trees gone missing he hasn’t been coming close to the window to gaze in at us like he used to, though.  (Grow new trees grow!)

I’ll take whatever I can get. I got to commune a few minutes with this magnificent wild thing, taking care to blink slowly from time to time so he would know he was the dominant one and that it was safe to be here.

Love love love having my hawk stop by.

A raven caught me suddenly noticing him too a backyard away and up in a tree. No bullying and stealing from Coopernicus this time, buddy–git!

Immediately it took off to dense bushes to the left where I couldn’t see it.

The hawk went where it wanted when it wanted and in no particular hurry after that.

We left yesterday morning for the trip southward and got back well into dark.

This evening, after two days of not being out in the yard, there were not just flowers with bulges at the bases but actual cherries, lots of cherries and there will be more as more petals fall away. I am utterly smitten: homegrown cherries on our own tree for the very first time ever, with some branches just starting in on the whole process. The third year’s clearly the charm.

The old Yellow Transparent apple was gray and wintery-bare Saturday with one single hint of life that is now a fully open flower at the end of a gnarly branch. So much more now. We will have cooking apples in June.

Inside, I finished a soft MadTosh merino hat but missed my chance to hand it off to the person who will give it to its recipient. There will be more days. He doesn’t know it’s coming and the anticipation of the surprise feels so sweet.

Trying to figure out how to get produce clamshells over all those cherries–or not–I think I definitely need to find some unsweetened Koolaid packets. Dilute them in water with no sugar, and an orchard back home near Camp David when I was a kid sprayed it on their cherries to make the birds reject the taste and leave them alone. I can only hope the squirrels and raccoons (who can tear through bird netting if they’re determined enough) feel the same way.

(Edited to add, I just found a review on Amazon by someone who spreads unsweetened Koolaid in his lawn to keep the Canada geese out. He said it MUST be Grape. Alright then. Grape it is!)