Clicking on a gardening forum site looking for information on mango trees is like wandering over to Ravelry and asking randomly, Do you knit?

Managed to get some of that done today, too. But it was a near thing for awhile there.

The squirrels still haven’t dared touch anything near any bubblewrap ten days after it first appeared outside so I added some to the upstart tomato plant today, given that there are several in there big enough for them to think about stealing.

It is December and for all the flowers on that September Surprise I don’t want my chances of tasting whatever variety it is and saving seeds to be any smaller than they have to be.

Meantime, I saw some photos online from Florida of individual mangoes hanging off the trees encased in produce clamshells and grinned, See? See? I’m not the only one who does that!

But dang. The squirrels in Florida like mangoes. Well, they don’t know a thing about them here–yet. My mother reminds me that they never touched the Page oranges in Maryland back in the day when the trucker dropped off all those cases in our carport when I was a teen, citrus wasn’t a food as far as those knew.

Re the Alphonso. The instructions that popped up after checkout last week said, Plant in a plastic pot with straight sides and keep out of the sun for 2-3 weeks while it acclimates to its new environment and to being out of that box after traveling by truck across the country all squished and in the dark. It will need to recuperate. Do *not* pull the tree out by the trunk to re-plant it into the ground; rather, pull or cut the pot away from the roots so as not to harm the tree.

Or words to that effect.

Me: hmm, how about that recycled-paper pot that demanded I buy it when we were at the hardware store a few weeks ago, before there even was a definite plan to buy a mango tree. And definitely before I knew I would need an in-between stage. We were there, buying stakes and a cover blanket for the Page orange and that out-of-season pot was sitting on a high shelf looking down at me, going, Well?

Well what?

Well it felt like the right thing. Richard asked me simply, Do you need it? and I said yes please, wondering why but going with the feeling (and it was going straight back up if the price was outlandish. Instead, I’ve seen packets of seeds that cost more.)

So he reached it down for me and so far it’s just been a holding spot for that anticipatory frost cover, unopened with the temps in the upper 50s at night. (Normal is 39.)

If we hadn’t bought it we’d be making a trip to go back to buy it. It’s too perfect. We’ll be able to plant the mango straight into it and then the whole thing straight into the ground in a few weeks. Under the awning, on the patio, right outside the window, the first little bit–I get to watch my birds trying out the strange new tree close up before it moves further out into the yard. (Note to Coopernicus: You Must Be This Small To Board This Ride.)

And as I was typing this I got an email from FedEx notifying me shipment has commenced, with the expected delivery date.

Which would be my birthday.

I like it.

(Oh, and, I knitted today, big surprise. Ho Ho Ho. Pictures? C’mon…)

A snag on a favorite sweater that dropped the stitch almost the whole way down the armscye. A Christmas stocking handknit by my niece’s grandmother (or maybe great-grandmother) that their dog had gotten into.

My sister-in-law doesn’t knit but she knows I do.

So here are the two arms side-by-side afterwards. I was working up the purl stitch on the left closest to the seed stitch area.

Except that when I started I was doing it stockinette side out rather than purl side and I had to drop it back down again and start over.

If you look down to eleventh row above bottom left, you’ll see where I goofed–I needed to have dropped back again to one stitch more than I did: there’s a knit where it should be a purl, and I didn’t notice till I had sewn the last, topmost stitch up with a bit of matching silk and tied it triumphantly off.

Given that I couldn’t entirely see the tiny stitches half the time and dropped individual ones repeatedly, we’ll just take that one knit one there as a kind of proud signature.

Then I tackled the dog-clawed: with a matching white yarn (yay stash! Oh wait–I know it does in artificial light, didn’t test it in sunlight but that’s as close as it was going to get, and yes, there are many versions of white but it felt like I matched fiber content too so it should stay matched) I first connected all the open loops top and bottom, making a square, and then I tried to reroute back up the various loops complete with my strand still in the uppers and lowers as reinforcement.

The first area looks very good, the second one, which had more damage and didn’t still have the sideways bars to work with (I should have made some, in retrospect) looks repaired. But it’s repaired. And it certainly passes the galloping-horse standard. (If you can’t see it from…then don’t sweat it.)

And now it has love for the young woman whose name is knitted into the cuff of it from a second woman joining the original knitter.

Tiny stitches, slippery yarn, slippery overly-reflective metal darning (because we’re too polite to call them d**#!ning) needles and a death grip on such–but I did it and it is done and it is deeply gratifying to know mother and daughter will have those home in time for Christmas.

And that it’s all over with.

Can’t blog now must finish knitting nieces’ Christmas presents….

How are you guys coming along? (Or is it fair to ask.)

Edited to add… DONE!

My five siblings and I do a round-robin on Christmas gift giving and this year it’s our turn for my brother with four daughters. Here, let me just block this one and then run in a few ends and they should all be in the mail come Monday.

It was dark and rainy out so this time I gave her a call first rather than just knocking on her door.

“I’m a bad neighbor.”

She did a doubletake–What?

I explained that I’d torn the plastic cover off the magazine that came in the mail, thinking, oh, they sent me a free copy to try to get me to subscribe (given that they’d pitched me an offer just a day or two before in the mail) and so I’d started reading it.

Then I went, wait a minute…and looked at that plastic wrap again, looking for the label. “It was your magazine,” I told her– “and then I read it anyway. It was Consumer Reports. I’m a bad neighbor.”

She laughed and told me I could read it any time and I said no, it’s yours.

She wanted to walk over so I wouldn’t have to get my hearing aids out in the rain and I wanted to show her the new apple tree and so I stepped outside anyway with a wool hat on and we met up in the middle. I handed her her mail and as we chatted we walked around to that tree (well, stick) right next to our property line.

Tart. She loves tart apples. This one will be so perfect.

I explained that given how invisible the little thing is in the dark, I didn’t want people walking into it, so that’s why I’d skewered this (now bedraggled, wet, droopy little) piece of white paper across the top.

“Is THAT what that is? I’d been wondering!”

We rolled our eyes at the fact that our mailman misdelivers between our two households multiple times a week–it’s been a regular, ongoing thing, but when she growled a bit at his incompetence I laughed and told her, I want to thank him, because we get to spend all these times talking that we would miss otherwise. (Adding quickly), But I wouldn’t want to give him any ideas!

Given that our by-mail meds went to her last week, it was a very good thing for us that she hadn’t flown out of town.

Yeah…

I wish the guy would do his job, I mean, how hard is it? And I’m glad he doesn’t. Just don’t tell him that.

A little more medical product testing today (the gizmos, not any drugs) which means I got to thank the good folks at that place: a few minutes there for my lifetime’s and my childrens’ and possibly grandchildrens’ lifetimes’ worth of the best mangoes out there. Quite the tradeoff.

Richard, on vacation, was having a grand time tinkering with gizmos and ideas towards keeping that tree warm when it gets here. Plumbing-warming coils going up the trunk? Here, he showed me, a thermostat with this and connected with that he could get…finally he grinned and let on that the old-Christmas-lights idea was actually quite a good one.

Whatever we do it’ll be because it was the best way to do it.

Went off to knit night and Juanita was there and it was so good to see her and everybody else. She pulled out her Schacht double-treadle, the wheel of my dreams (I have my plainer-jane Ashfords, sold to me used as a pair twenty years ago) and she starting spinning fleece into gold as I knitted and thought about how long it had been since I’d really put my Trad to major use.

I showed her my blue shoes that didn’t quite entirely match my outfit but they did match my project; I told her I’d found the way to get the thing done was not to have my clothes clash with my knitting. She laughed. And thought a moment. And went, yeah. Yeah, I can see that.

Another hour and a half and I think I’ll have this one Christmas present nailed and mailed; meantime, just in case, you never know, given how early her brothers came into the world, I checked my phone before I left Purlescence.

Nope. Not yet.

No hurry, little one. Take your time.

Almost as much rain in the last two days as all of last year. Flood advisories have been in effect.

And yet, when the sky held its breath a moment I did finally risk it and run an errand today. I could have waited a few days but it just felt like, go.

Which means I was in the right place at the right time to run into a woman I hadn’t seen in several years, a widow of my parents’ generation. “Marilyn?!” It did us both good.

When I pulled back into my driveway, there was–this is getting to be a daily occurrence–my Cooper’s hawk right overhead, free from any corvid harassment this time, simply seeing and being seen. Loved it.

Back to work. I wondered if I should join the ends of a scarf that came out a tad short and call it a double-over-able infinity scarf for a niece? It was a Stitches splurge two years ago and one skein was all there was or ever would be. (Handdyed cashmere, people.) I should ask Morgan what his youngest would think since it’s in her color. She’s old enough to take good care of it. (Handwash. Tepid water. No agitating around.)

Tomato plant: this is the one that sprouted three weeks into September that the squirrels planted. Now I just have to keep them from it so I can begin to guess what the variety is as it grows. December tomatoes! I guess I can’t complain about how it’s been 15 degrees warmer at night than the norm for weeks.

Anyone with any experience growing cherries, meantime: do you get individual flowers per each growth bud in that cluster of four or do you get clusters of flowers from each growth bud? I assume the single ones here and there will be next year’s new limbs.

Half the fun is watching and finding out but I wouldn’t mind flipping ahead in the book.

So FedEx said last week that my columnar apple tree was supposed to arrive tomorrow.

I happened to have someone here today who was digging the hole for me in preparation; schedules being what they are, this was when he could do it but I could hopefully handle it from there.

Yeah, and that’s what we did with the Page tree and I don’t think I mentioned here that I actually briefly knocked myself out cold doing that. One good push on the tip of the shovel to widen that hole and suddenly I was on the ground facing the other way, sprawled over it and scraped up with no idea how I’d gotten there. None. I still don’t know.

I was quietly not eager to do that again.

While the guy was digging the FedEx guy went past him and there was a thump at the door. And there was the Stark Bros box! My gardener took great pride in being able to put that thing in the ground himself and being a part of it after I told him why I’d ordered it, and so, it is done. (He works for the lady next door, too. He was very pleased that it was for her to be able to pick apples again.)

I thought about it tonight and impaled a piece of white paper at the top of it so that people wouldn’t walk into the little thing in the dark and the rain.

So much rain. Such needed, wonderful rain.

A little later I stepped out in the back yard for just a second–and heard the birds. Looked up in time to see the three of them passing directly overhead, and whether the two were crows or ravens I couldn’t tell from below.

But they were chasing my Cooper’s hawk out of my yard. They looked flimsy, he looked massive, but he was outnumbered.

He swooped up and into the redwood just across the fence; one veered off to I don’t know where but the other divebombed him again and again, daring him to strike out or take it, always threatening, never quite landing talon or beak on my bird. Who sat there and watched the show for awhile.

Finally, tiring of it, he took off but unfortunately in the general direction of yonder persimmon tree and suddenly we had the two of them hard after him again.

Go Coopernicus go!

And thing the third…

I had signed up to be notified. It had been several months and it was winter (albeit an unseasonably warm one here, even for California) and I wasn’t holding my breath, but this evening suddenly that notification came in: the seven-gallon size Alphonso mango trees were back in stock at Top Tropicals. I double-checked quickly with Richard.

This is the variety that the local ex-pats wait for cases of via the once-a-year plane from India, too fragile for supermarket distribution, picked that day and flown straight here. The one that Dani swooned over and told me passionately that if I didn’t plant one, “You will never know!”

And now we will.

I emailed him a thank you.

Almost immediately another Alphonso tree got sold and they were almost gone. Word was getting out.

I went outside this morning to set out some suet crumbles for the wrens, the juncos, the white-crowned sparrows and the towhees: the ground birds.

Coopernicus appeared out of nowhere (hawks are good at that) and fluttered at ease down to the top of the tomato cage to get a better view.

He was relaxed as he watched me.

I, not wanting to scare him away, though, rather than being interesting, froze in place, marveling: he had never before come closer in while I was outside. In no way was he threatening me out of his territory nor was he in any hurry; he looked curious, is all.

The angle of the sun had his chestnut feathers and gray wings in the best light–all he needed was MJ telling him he was gorgeous and has he been painted? Photographed?

Having said hello, he lifted off easily after a minute or so in a bird version of ambling away.

Meantime, on a more down-to-earth note, a well-aged UFO got excavated and finished today because someone asked if I might have a rustic, handspun, undyed, earthy-looking yarn? They were helping set up the annual Creche Exhibit and I had just the thing–it just happened to be attached to a project that only needed 3000 more stitches.

Had I done that particular math I’d have just broken it off and handed the ball over and reattached it later if later ever happened, and if not, eh. That project was a UFO because it and I were not friends. Handspun and rustic? Definitely. There were enough really thin spots that I never did trust that yarn to stay in one piece. After four years, a bug could have contributed, too, but the ziploc looked clean of such.

It and I were less friendly after the second big madly-running break suddenly showed up. I repaired both, finished–that thing on my needles was a ruffly scarf? Who knew? Washed and laid it out ever so carefully, carefully to dry, no tugging.

And boom there was the third. This one is definitely not gift-giving material.

When it is dry I will fix it. (I tried not to resent the Christmas-queue time spent.) Oh well. *shrug* I wound off a bit from the remaining ball to use for hopefully all repairs it may ever need from here on out, and when they come to pick their yarn up I will tell them sweetly and firmly to never, ever bring it back in my sight.

Hopefully that scarf will be good for more than bird nesting after this.

And while I was fussing with all that, I got an unexpected email from my friend Mari in Wisconsin who’s been fighting breast cancer for some time (get checked!) She validated my grumping without judging, heard me out, and offered perspective.

I wanted to be a better person in that moment.

Hers was the true gift-giving material.

Okay, y’all, I am writing this down for me. Not for you–shoo, run along, go read the ad for the drunk kleptomaniac pet kangaroo that beat a burglar senseless (but didn’t run up the home insurance rates because it wasn’t dogbiting!) and that needs a new good home. Cheap! But only to a serious animal lover! Steel wallboard a plus.

Me, I’ll sit here quietly transcribing this for the ages. My ages. Because, as she reminded me while trying not to quite say it, they’ll be coming down on my head in no time, but meantime…

Sunday School was going on and two people were in that room who were clearly sick–so I quickly excused myself and sat down around the corner instead on the steps to the stage, glad for my knitting. I don’t like the sense of exile; I don’t like the germs; I do like staying alive. Should I have been reading scriptures to be a good example while being a bad example to the random eight-year-old going by? Ya wanna make something out of it?

Okay, then, in baby alpaca/merino/silk it is, the essence of softness in heathery royal blue, and I sought comfort in pretty yarn and good intentions of the season. (Hey, Morgan, now that I’ve already started this, what are your girls’ favorite colors?)

MJ, just a little younger than my mom and not in class just then either, came up to me.

“Have you been painted?”

Doubletake. Have I what? Surely I didn’t hear that one right?

She repeated, “Have you been photographed or painted?”

Total head tilt.

“Because you’re gorgeous.” I looked around to the other side to see who she was talking to, and I meant that.

So did she.

She asked me how old was I going to be next month? (We’re fellow December babies.) She described a little of what aging does to one’s face; I told her I’d had skin cancer off the top of my head and in the surgery had accidentally lost my grandma eyes, but I assured her I had had grandma eyes and said with a grin that I missed them.

“They’ll come back,” she nodded, and said I had it just right right now and someone needed to photograph or better yet paint me as I am. Right now, at the peak of perfection, basically.

This from the most-original-60’s-version-Earth Mother I have ever had the great pleasure to know. I so was not expecting a conversation like this. She was quite serious. (It dawns on me at last, proofreading this, that her late husband had been a serious photographer. The connection clicks: she was missing him a lot today after spending Thanksgiving with family with him absent and I didn’t catch it in time to remember him to her. I will now.)

I told her helpfully that my sister Anne was a professional water color artist, and with that she was satisfied. “Have them take lots of pictures,” she counseled me one last time before she headed for Sunday School, for Anne to work from or for my grandkids to marvel over later or to convince me or what I wasn’t entirely sure.

That stupid hair I was fussing over this morning while wishing I were way better at fussing with it?

For today, it totally would do.

Okay, y’all can come back now, I’ve put the vanity mirror down. Did anybody snatch up that kangaroo offer?

Celebrated Small Business Saturday at Cottage Yarns and Purlescence. Two 100 g skeins of Cascade cabled baby alpaca/merino for a grand sum of $5.77 from the latter’s sale table, with that AmEx promotion? Yes please.

Three’s the magic number of shops, so from there we celebrated at Timothy Adams for hot chocolate and truffles. We tried first to buy outdoor heating cables from the local plumbing supply place but no such luck, so, the chocolatiers win.

And then, having been up early yesterday and then up way late for an airport pickup and then a busy day today, I suddenly crashed. I was trying to do all. the. things. but admitted how hard it was catching up to me and Richard told me to go put my feet up. Take a rest. Sit. Now.

And that is why the baby hat is (finally) done. The next one will be far faster because now I actually know what it looks like when I’m done with that particular doodle idea. And I’m tired enough that I didn’t realize till I hit publish that I hadn’t even taken the thing’s picture (she edited).

It almost matches the yarn I bought today to make a baby dress with–close enough to look, rather, like I just missed.

So I will have to make a new hat and that new dress and it will all be good. Because you can never have enough baby gifts waiting their turn.

Yeah, I went out there. But not to the malls.

Phyllis wanted to beat the crowds so we got there at nine. Meaning that while other people were out Black Friday shopping the 6am-noon specials, we were at the San Jose Harvest Festival with guest passes via Mel and Kris and having an easy time of it.

Phyllis and I both bought some of their pottery (no surprise) and they offered to hold it for us so we wouldn’t have to lug it all around, since we’d just gotten there.

Mel happened to mention to me that some of their customers had asked them how to keep squirrels away from their birdfeeders, now that they sell ceramic hangers stuffed with fleece from their sheep for birdnesting materials.

(And wasn’t that piece a birdhouse? That was new.)

“Bubble wrap,” says I.

“Bubble wrap?!” as he started to envision…

Kris blinked, “Yeah–their claws…!”

And the light reflections and the fact that it doesn’t hold still and I’m still waiting for that first loud pop.

“GENIUS!” He added, “Did you think of this yourself?”

“Only took me five years,” I grinned. Or five decades, but never mind.

I found the pomegranate folks again; I said to the woman, Remember how I told you the bottle I’d given my daughter had been bad? (She’d apologized that they must have accidentally handed me the opened demo bottle last year and she’d replaced it when I saw her in San Mateo.)

Yeah?

Well, she absconded not only with the new one but with some of the other stuff, too.

So I was there to buy a new batch and we swapped mom stories, our kids being the same age, and she laughed when I said with just the right amount of teasing petulance that my daughter was “Just going to have to buy. her. own! next time.”

She said the show special was one of everything they had there plus this many of the less-expensive items, your choice, this price. I bought not only that but another three of the fruit spread. Yeah I could mail-order it. No I didn’t ever get around to it but once this past year. So my goal was to buy what I wanted for the whole coming year (as if!) But I could try.

We turned to go and I glanced back just in time to see her do an overhead high-five with the guy she was working with. Caught! More laughter. Priceless. And good, I hope they do a fantastic business, Skylake deserves it.

Bought great olive oil from the couple that owns those trees.

We left when the crowds started picking up, stopping by to pick up the pomegranate box–more teasing both ways, more laughing–and then to Mel and Kris’s.

I still have two more to go before I have a dozen bowls to match the number of plates and mugs, but at least I’m now closer by two. Another toddler mug against the day of breakage and a spoon rest.

That bag looked big but I didn’t think anything of it.

I got home and started putting things away.

Wait, what?

I pulled a big box of Ghirardelli chocolate squares out.

I found a paper bag with a note from Kris.

There were handmade soaps and lotion from the milk from the goats on their farm.

Those big grins on their faces, if only we’d known. I love it. They totally got me.

Torte, pies, *spiced pecans, did we forget anything? Past the cities, up into the mountains, winding through redwoods and over the reservoir (still looking awfully empty, but it’s about to rain for four days) and to the aunt’s house.

I debated explaining to a small child that her Aunt Allyson was our cousin and I, as her cousin (once removed), was Alison but I was not her aunt.

Eh. Just give her a few years. She was still figuring out that two people were answering to the same name.

The eleven-month-old started screaming during the prayer over the food, suddenly turning into hiccupy giggles. I didn’t peek to see who got to so thoroughly charm the baby back to happiness in the middle of the solemn pronouncement of thanks for all our blessings. Probably half the table.

Six and seven year olds, cousins to each other, taught me how to play the game Blink–and then, *blink*, they both pushed it away out of reach, done. We hadn’t played it yet: the fun part was teaching the grownup. They had taken turns carefully going over the instructions, each getting to do so twice, making sure I’d gotten it.

I was all ready to try it.

Nope–the younger one had won two games the last time they’d gotten together and clearly that success was not to be outdone by me. The pride, it needed savoring awhile, and her slightly older cousin was looking out for her like a big brother and backing her up on that with pride of his own in doing so. Both had big grins.

Dinner a little behind us, it was time for a–well, there were a lot of desserts. We had fourteen people and cherry, pecan, pumpkin, apple, chocolate silk pies, plus that chocolate torte. Fourteen, that is, if you include the baby. Uncle Nate felt sorry for the deserted pumpkin and helped himself to a slice–a small one by that point.

And then we braved the traffic, where so many other people were likewise returning from time with loved ones, and made it safely home.

*Spiced pecans

Have ready about three cups pecans toasted single layer ten or twelve minutes at 350 till they smell done. Will get crisp as they cool.

So, 1 c. sugar mixed with dash salt and a tbl cinnamon. Add 1/2 c water, stir, heat till it starts to boil, turn it down a bit, and let bubble away (not too high a heat) for at least ten minutes, NOT stirring, you don’t want crystals forming, till the temp is 236. (241 in the center in my pot, 235ish at the outer edges, using the infrared thermometer–good enough.) Add the vanilla (stand back, it’ll steam a little), then–and this is where it turns into real work–mix those pecans in, stir stir stir with a big wooden spoon, trying not to break them. Keep going till the mixture no longer makes long sticky threads but it’s all adhered to the pecans (and the pot). Turn onto a buttered (better) or sprayed (we had another dairy allergic there and didn’t risk butter) pan to cool.

Feed to people you love.

Should have thought of this years ago.

Weird light reflections. A (very faint) smell Nature never made. The edges randomly flying up when a bird flutters down nearby and probably making a squeaky sound when they do.

Nothing has dared yet actually step on the stuff but I’ve seen some grand leaps sideways in avoidance.

We had been having so many squirrels of late.

Bubble wrap. That’s all it took. Just for a little while, while they re-learn some manners. I popped a bubble or two going by but resisted the impulse to squish them all–gotta leave some to do their job.

Maybe the peach clamshells next Spring could use an outer liner against raccoon prying–Christmas packages will be coming soon and let’s hope for no packing peanuts this year, I have other plans.

Meantime, we staked out the Page orange tonight and made it ready for a tarp come hint of frost. The weatherman says our nights are still eighteen degrees warmer than the norm but the fuzz and the fat on the squirrels and the layers of sweaters on me say that no, it really is getting chilly out there.

May tomorrow be warm with laughter and good folks and good times shared. Travel safely. Happy Thanksgiving!

If you have room for a pot, you have room for one of these new-variety trees, although you’re going to need two for pollination if there aren’t any other apple trees around–but aren’t those cool? Eighteen to twenty-four inches across fully grown, eight to ten feet tall.

Our next-door neighbor’s Gravenstein, a locally-famous old variety, died some time ago and she was lamenting to me the other day that she misses it still.

Between our properties there was once a towering but dying pine tree  just over on her side. We had been concerned it would fall and the direction it was most likely to fall was on our house. Taking it out, though–one guy knocked on my door wanting seven grand for the job. Gack.

Then came the time in ’03 when I was in the hospital trying not to die of my Crohn’s disease the first time. Our neighbor’s response when she found out was to want to do something: so she picked up the phone and got that monster tree cut down.

We like having that part of the front yard opened up. And yet… It’s been long enough that the pine roots are pretty much one with the soil now.

Twenty-four inches and straight-up growth. It won’t block our way, it won’t block her gate and outgrowing its space will never be an issue. We can put it just to our side of the property line and still have plenty of room, and Stark Bros tells me that my other apples on the far side of the property will be all it needs to produce.

These won’t be Gravensteins but they will be tart ones; I went for the Tangy Greens to keep the critters disinterested. I have friends in the area with a Granny Smith that their squirrels leave alone.

The tree ships out Monday and with Fall planting they say the roots may well make enough headway for it to start producing the first year.

We’ve already told her they are hers for the picking. Anytime.

And then I told her why.