The email’s been wonky for a few days and despite some work by the resident geek last night it failed altogether–so if you didn’t hear back from me, I apologize, and we’re hoping (again) that it’ll all be good to go by morning.

The trees, however, were not stumped; when the grinding crew is ready they’ll let me know.

Years ago we had a volunteer fig right up against the fence on the far side of the yard and it grew from seed to two feet above that fence and with a few actual figs on it all in a single season. But it was already proving that living, growing wood is stronger than dead planks and that had to be the end of that.

That same year, the neighbors over thisaway whose house we now have a better view of had a fig sprout up, too, and they, too, reluctantly had to take it down. The birds just don’t quite plant them in the right spot. They never did get around to planting one of their own, after all, a whole tree makes for a whole lot of fruit and of taken space.

I’m remembering that tree and looking out the window here to the unaccustomed view of their upper windows and thinking, y’know, we could probably fix that visual opening, or at least the part I most want to, in one season. Maybe, with the requisite pruning, two. And I know they like figs. I want a variety that’s somewhat dwarfed so as not to be too much trouble keeping it down to size, to about the height that other one got to. You just need the right thing planted in there.

A local gardening and knitting friend says she has several and her Black Jacks are the best. “Naturally small” tree, says Dave Wilson.

But nothing is set in stone, much less dirt yet, and there is definitely room for more than one tree anyway. Making me wait a few more days where all I can do is learn more and ask more is probably a good thing.

The first thing the two tree guys did, to my surprise, was to make a beeline for my Alphonso in great excitement. “That’s a mango, isn’t it!” as they took in the possibility that such a thing could actually grow here.

A taste of home, I wondered?

“See how the cord is tangled in the growth here?” (Looking back up at me.) “You need to set up a frame of something to hold up the lights, not on the tree.”

I’d known that for a long time but hadn’t figured out what to do nor how to make it work as the thing grew, but as he said that he could see it dawning on me: “Like a tomato cage,” I answered, turning to look at the (too tall for my frost cover, that one won’t work) very heavy cylindrical one across the yard that a friend had made us. I got it now: it didn’t have to be perfect forever, it just had to work well for right now.

“Yes.” And then the older guy wanted to know, re the tree, “Where did you buy it?”

“Florida.”

He both laughed and winced–a little hard to zip over there to check out the specimens, okay. They wanted to know about the temperature setup and the fact that you still have to put a frost cover over every night–Christmas lights for the heat, though, eh? And I wondered how long it would be before they’d be growing their own. I mentioned that we’d planted it the day before a 24 degree night, but hey, look. They approved.

A neighbor over thataway was having tree work done too and the younger guy and one of theirs apparently recognized each other and stopped to say hi across the fence in what was clearly a happy moment.

And then they got down to work.

The dracaena palm–out. The privet–out. The buckthorn–out.

There was a volunteer juniper bush, not very big yet but I was clearly not a fan–the guy motioned through the window at me and held a section upward, questioning? Yes?

Yes!

Alright! One whack of the chainsaw and it was gone and good riddance to the prickly little beast.

Then came the olive. It was to be trimmed downward a quarter and the deadwood cut off.

Except, with everything else out of the way we could finally get a good view of it and that really left nothing but trunk and a bit of froth and I didn’t see how it could survive–it had been near dead as it was.

Chris the boss man happened to stop by right as they got to that point, in just the most perfect timing; “How much to just finish it off?” I asked.

“A hundred fifty.”

I called Richard. Alright then. Out with it.

They cleaned up the job site, Chris having already gone on to the next, and that was that. The stump grinders will come later.

I never, ever, would have thought we could get that much sun in that part of the yard. Never. It has always been in dark shadow. But the afternoon sun was reflecting so brightly off the now-bare fence that my eyes complained. (But then, I’d spent too much time outside–I’m just glad it wasn’t June.)

We’ll have to plant something right away to fix that. Now that I know it’s got direct sun from 2:00 to sundown, and I’ll watch tomorrow to see how many more hours it will be, we have a whole lot more possibilities than we’d thought. Pomegranates, mandarins, a fig kept very small… We’ll see. They could easily grow there, and I never would have thought.

A squirrel perched on the empty fence line, staring, demanding that his personal escalators reappear, darnit.

All in good time, little guy, all in good time.

This is going to be hard. I like having that green outside the window, and it will take a few years for the new to fill in the blankness.

It shades the neighbor’s garden and our solar. It needs to be done.

The first time the tree people put us on the schedule, I both had the flu and was passing blood–just not the day to deal with one more thing nor to be around anyone. I’m fine now, and they called asking if tomorrow…?

Nesting season has begun but there are no discernible nests in that tree; that chickadee I saw with the moss was heading to some place beyond the fence, as have all the others as far as I’ve been able to tell.

I will replace it immediately with a dwarf citrus that will never get much higher than the fence, even if we never prune it.

We are also taking out a small volunteer palm whose roots threaten both the garage and the neighbor’s redwood. Out.

Chainsaws in the morning.

It’s lined. It’s thick. It’s plain. It’s simple. It’s in a good guy-type color.

And at long, long, long last, it is done for my brother who, when he moved to Colorado, there was hail the first week big enough to dent his car–in August! So he needed something wind- and snow-proof to the very best of my abilities. Merino and silk, 50/50, four layers when you fold up the brim. Merry Christmas, Morgan.

Although, they might need such a thing in Huntington Beach near Los Angeles, too–where, as they described it, people in shorts and Ugg boots were throwing snowballs today.

An elderly friend moving into assisted living last year gave me her old amaryllis bulb that had come covered in decorative dried moss, telling me I’d be able to get it to bloom again. I can only imagine how it was for her to give up her garden and I hope to bring her flowers from it to brighten up her new place.

I left the moss in the pot with an eye towards spring.

It has been discovered, as I knew it would be. And so the Chestnut-Backed chickadee announces it
 is nesting season as she builds a new home of her own. 

Good intentions, got up, got ready, and felt like okay, that’s it for now, I’m done.

I got talked into going anyway. And so we picked up Michelle and went to our favorite chocolatier downtown. (That car is not sitting in the middle of the chocolates display–it’s a reflection from outside.)

The other two went back over thataway to the left to chat a moment over where you can watch them making wonderful things while I drooped in a corner at the front, waiting. Timothy saw me and immediately sent Michelle over with one of their new pieces, wrapped in foil so that I didn’t have to eat it immediately if I didn’t want to. He caught my eye in happy anticipation and got to see my whole face change–my day had just gotten better on the spot, as he’d hoped. Thank you!

Adams, his partner, talked fruit trees with me briefly between customers: at their old house, they’d had eleven. The one he most had to tell me about, though, that he clearly most missed–was a rare-variety mango tree.

A fellow mango grower! I’d had no idea! I am so glad I went!

The chocolate everything was wonderful but I couldn’t eat it all. Most of my cuppa became a to-go–which is fine, it turns into a light ganache in the fridge and I’ll scoop some into my hot cocoa tomorrow and greatly improve it. I’m looking forward to it.

After dropping Michelle off, heading towards home to let me rest, my sweetie asked me what I most wanted done today.

Well, actually… He’d bought all the parts, and what I most wanted was to get the box set up that will turn the Christmas lights on and off based on temperature without my needing to be there. For the times we know we’re going to get home late but don’t want to cook the tree during the warmth of the day by simply leaving them on. For the times we go out of town. For taking care of my mango while giving me a little more leeway.

(Yeah, you can buy such things, but he does electronics like I do yarn. Create a little. Play.)

He was surprised at how much longer it took to do than he’d expected–he spent most of the rest of the day on it but he did it and it is ready to go. It’s not outside yet because by the time he finished it was 49F and falling fast and I’d already covered and lit the thing for the night. That, and, going back out there in the dark, um, hormonal skunks have been having hissy fits of late and I’ve luckily missed them so far. Barely, once.

Tomorrow, then. “It’s in Celsius, because, y’know. Scientists,” he told me, grinning. (And because converting it was going to take far more programming time than it was worth bothering over.)

While he was making that I was researching automatic watering systems. I want my trees’ health not depending on mine.

Oh and? There was a new cluster of buds today beginning in a new place on that mango. (YAY!!!!!) Not that I’m excited or anything. Oh no not at all.

I’ll have to bring Timothy and Adams one when I can. (Don’t worry, Dani, you’re still first in line.)

The awful and ironic thing after yesterday’s post was finding a very still honeybee with a foot snagged in the mango tree cover today. It was quite cold but I don’t think it was the cold. (Cue McCoy: “He’s dead, Jim.”) I will keep that cover further away come the mornings henceforth from anything flowering.

I’ve been checking the new peach every day for any sign of breaking dormancy and at two weeks after planting, at last this evening there was a bit of green here and swelling pink buds there and there–my apologies that I cannot hold my hands steady enough for the camera to zero in well. One concern had been that the Indian Free produces so late that I was hoping the flowering would still overlap with at least the Babcock, since it’s the only one that needs a pollinator.

Well there you go. Looks like we’re going to do just fine. Whether I let it set fruit so young or not, I love that I didn’t have to wait another year or two to find out.

Meantime, I woke up this morning needing to knit something pretty. I didn’t know what and I didn’t care but I needed to knit and I needed lace and I needed something colorful and pretty and NOW.

The end result is that after looking briefly at some promising yarns, I sat down with the endless slog of dark steel blue in boring 2×2 and made major progress on my brother’s hat, neglected during this flu till now. And I actually got to where I could see the end of the thing coming at me. That feels huge. It is actually rewarding me with progress in exchange for time spent. It did not feel so for so long.

I can’t end without mentioning my sense of loss, like everybody else’s sense of loss, at Leonard Nimoy’s passing. My favorite tribute to him comes from President Obama himself:

“Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy. Leonard was a lifelong lover of the arts and humanities, a supporter of the sciences, generous with his talent and his time. And of course, Leonard was Spock. Cool, logical, big-eared and level-headed, the center of Star Trek’s optimistic, inclusive vision of humanity’s future.

I loved Spock.”

As did we all.

If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t miss Mr. Nimoy’s explanation for the origins of the Vulcan greeting.

The first two plum blossoms opened today, joining with the tea roses and the blueberry, peach, and mandarin flowers, and it has begun to be heavenly the moment you step outside. I marveled this evening thinking, but it’s not spring yet! But then I walked across the yard taking note of how, yes, actually, it’s beginning to be. California, remember? Apples, cherry, lemon, raspberry, more peaches–there will be far more to come. There is actually a fruit bud on the Comice pear, and they only bear on three- to ten-year-old wood.

The mango bud stalks are noticeably longer than two days ago, and I’m thinking, especially as the side shoots grow, that what I need is a better way to hold the Christmas lights up on that tree; there’s only one side branch to wrap them over and I don’t want the cord to sit at the notches where things are growing from, but for now, they are.

I know I obsess a little over the thing. It’s just, I’ve never seen a mango tree grow before.

Today I saw the indiegogo campaign for the beekeeping setup (great article there) that would require no smoke, no lifting out, no stress on the bees. Just peek in the window, see that it’s ready, open the tap and let the honey slowly fill up your jars and then turn it off. The bees get right to work resealing everything at their end.

We certainly have enough fruit trees to keep a hive busy and happy and there are a lot of urban beekeepers in the area who would surely love one of those. I’m not intending (yet) to become one–but I very much love that this thing has been invented. It’s an idea that will clearly greatly increase the number of people willing to keep bees. And we definitely need those bees.

——–

Edited 24 hours later to mention an important link re the Flow. I had no idea it could mess with the genetic diversity of the hive, but apparently it can. These professional beekeepers had some points to make that definitely bear attention.

I went to a lecture once years ago by a Stanford professor who, with his grad students, had designed an aid to hearing aids: it was a kind of horseshoe-ish necklace with six microphones set in it, using the wearer’s own chest to help screen out background noise while relaying sounds up to the hearing aids. That which is straight ahead of you you can hear.

He tested it out on a woman with profound hearing loss on a very busy street. They faced each other and he spoke with that tremendous amount of low-pitched background noise going on right there, the very worst for wiping out the highest frequencies where the consonants of speech reside–and she heard every word clearly.

He said that when he told her it was a prototype only and that she had to give it back she burst into tears. She was desperate to own it. I can well imagine.

He then searched for a manufacturer willing to pick up on the idea but last I heard several years after, none had. He was custom-making them one by one at six grand apiece as any request came in.

At the time, six grand just staggered or I’d have asked for one, too, and we certainly debated the idea and the cost and wished. Only, my hearing aids didn’t even have the telephone coil that his setup needed in the first place, so there would have been replacing them, too, although, I have since. I don’t have t-coil now, either, I have blu-tooth going to a device connecting my phone and my $8888-a-pair aids and having not thought about him in awhile until today, am suddenly wondering if he’s still making them and if he’s updated his technology… (But can we come up with the funds. Same thought, just like the old thought.)

All this by way of mentioning an article I stumbled across about a company that was making special glasses for doctors to use during surgery and a friend of one such doctor thought they looked cool, could he try them on?

The right person in the right place at the right time asking the right nonchalant even almost flippant question, having no idea.

It apparently had not occurred to the company that they had created a solution for red/green colorblind problems, but suddenly they had a huge potential market and they are running with it.

Just in case you know someone this applies to. And whatever they’ll cost, let me tell you, it just can’t be all that much.

I was knitting in the waiting room today. My choices included kidney stone, kidney cancer, or an infection that would respond to antibiotics within four hours.

Yes please on the latter.

Thank you lab work. One dose down and just like they promised, it’s already starting to kick in. Sweet success.

Meantime, we hit 32 degrees last night and it was 43 under the mango cover–just above the limit of 40F where the inflorescences (flowering sets) die, not that there were any of those to worry about but one wants no cold spots.

Oh wait. While I was sick this past week–

–looks great to me!

(Views are from one side of the trunk and the other. Future leaves and branch in this one, inflorescence in the second view: we could actually get mangoes this year.)

(And then I go to…) Huh. My iPhone isn’t sending photos for some reason, even after I just deleted a hundred or two and I have no idea why. Anybody?

Well, anyway, trust me, the cluster of buds, it’s there.

And I might actually get that monster 250g worth of merino/silk hat finished while the weather’s being terrible in other places.

Edited to add, Richard to the rescue!

Our neighbors thanked us for the extra sunlight for their garden after the tree cutting last summer.

A week ago, I was weeding and found one plant that was different and was amused that it looked like a carrot top as I yanked it out. I was standing on my side of the fence from that garden.

Oh wait. Look at that size 00000 orange thumb needle under there. Who knew.

Today I went out and near that same spot, it looks to me like a strawberry plant (and I know they grow strawberries.) Think I’ll keep this one awhile and see what it does.

Let me say upfront that it’s nearly impossible to rile my husband. He’s calm, steady, seeks for understanding, he’s my rock. So I can’t imagine that he was anything but matter-of-fact in his statement. Me, on the other hand, I think I struggle a little harder at staying charitable when someone hits me right where I live. Literally. Even if we tell them they don’t know, they can’t possibly know, we remind ourselves, only those who live it can.

Although, the doctors and nurses at Stanford Hospital certainly do a good job of it. Good people. Yeah… That, “Oh I remember you!”

Our ward shares its church building with another ward and at the beginning of every year we flip which one has mornings and which the afternoons, whose toddlers get their nap time, who gets to sleep in.

There is an elderly woman in the other ward who–and this is the first year she’s done this–has decided she didn’t want to make that switch so she would just join ours. She probably has her favorite seat that her ward knows all about and she always goes there unless someone beats her to it, and that’s fine. We do too, going for where I’m most likely to hear, assuming no one else is there yet.

Two weeks ago she sat down right behind us (we always get there a little early, she, a little late) and started coughing hard. I apologized but got up and moved as far away as I reasonably could without making a scene (scoot down that bench…) Our ward knows. She had no idea, so we explained after the meeting was over and hoped that was that.

Last week someone beat her there–he was from out of town, visiting his grandkids. Directly behind us, clearly sick, coughing deeply. Given how fast and how hard that same cough would hit me a few days later, I can understand why getting ready for church he’d probably thought it wasn’t much. And I can certainly understand wanting to spend every minute with your grandkids you can (this being why I’ve been wearing face masks to church since Madison was born–I don’t want to be limited in when we can go see ours. But last week I forgot to bring one and there you go.)

The brainstem lupus had me fainting in the shower this morning, saved by the shower chair a dear friend dropped off last night when she heard. The tyranny of the ileostomy is that it does not care that you’re too sick to deal with changing the dressing every third day, you absolutely must and you must do every step right because one four-month staph infection is enough.

Hopefully all of this will be very short-term. I prefer my Crohn’s flares being in the past tense–and for the most part, they are, this is nothing compared to those two big ones: when my life was saved by an experimental med, when my life was saved by major surgery.

Michelle’s idea is that we should ask permission to place a box of face masks at the entryway for all who might need one to help themselves to. I think I should have one and a spare in my purse as it is.

Richard went off to church this morning. That same elderly lady sat down behind him after he got there.

And again she was coughing. A lot. While asking after me.

A short and sweet, “My wife is very ill. Someone was coughing right behind her last week.”

We bought plane tickets before all this started to go see our grandkids and to celebrate a birthday. Assuming we’re healthy.

—–

P.S. Rereading this I’m thinking, can you tell I’m ready to be done with this? And remembering the nurse I once apologized to at Stanford who comforted me with, and I’ll never forget the kindness of her words, “It’s okay to be grumpy: when our patients feel well enough to be grumpy it means they’re getting better and they want to go home.”

Read an article about noise and light pollution and its effects on the wildlife. Now, that subject could be an entire college major and this was one relatively short article, but at least I did learn a few things about what the Christmas lights on my mango tree might be doing out there.

House finches are late risers and couldn’t care less. Alright then.

Robins wake up several hours earlier and get to start foraging before anyone else can beat them to it.

After we planted that tree and started turning on its lights every night I started seeing robins in my back yard for the first time in all the years we’ve lived here.

Curious.

Last night Richard took care of the mango tree for me.

Tonight I turned the warming lights on and covered it over myself, claiming a little bit of normal life even though I’m far from feeling it–but it’s proof that today was better than yesterday. By far.

Still needing anti-nausea meds, though–the Crohn’s has been announcing itself along with the flu. Hopefully it will all settle down when the germs are over.

Nope, no Stitches.

Woke up too sick to get out of bed, started barfing nonstop, went from no cough to “sounds like pneumonia” in three hours (X-ray was clear for now) and spent five hours getting fluids pumped in me at Urgent Care. Just got home.

Not what I wanted.

Mel and Kris Kunihiro were going to custom-make me some extra-talls of their rice bowls for me to pick up. I’ll see if I can reach them on FB. I would gladly reimburse anyone who picked, say, four of them up for me if they have them.

Okay, back to bed.

(Ed. to add in the morning, they didn’t bring those bowls so that part is all good; we can wait till next time I see them.)