My Apricot Hopes: from Jam to Stones to Little Trees

 I had hoped to make a trip to a few apricot orchards last summer. 

Spurred on by blog and cookbook author, Lisa Prince Newman, I had noted the location of some orchards in what people now think of as Silicon Valley, but it was not always so.  I grew up just north of the Golden Gate and remember a family jaunt to orchards south of the city.  Little farms that welcome visitors and have ripe cherries and apricots on the trees make a pretty indelible memory.  

Pre-covid, back in the last months of 2019 and maybe even a week or two in January 2020, I was imagining an early summer trip to Monterey County to visit friends on the coast south of Carmel. On our return home I had hoped  to wind our way to a few orchards I had read about.  Timing is everything with apricots; it is a short season and a fragile fruit, but the possibility of tree ripened apricots seemed within my grasp. 

Sadly, the 2020 apricot events had to be cancelled and family farms and orchards were not open to the public. Visiting our friends was not an option either. Our trip to the central coast is still a hope for another season. 

As the summer of 2020 unfolded, my gratitude for our garden and fruit trees grew, but I was wishing I had an apricot tree.  We twice had planted an apricot in our home garden. The first was one of the many fruit trees crushed by a neighbor's giant Cedar tree while we were renting out our house and working in Carmel. The tenants in our house telephoned to tell us of the fearful sounds as the huge tree fell on a stormy night. Thankfully the heavy trunk and long limbs had just missed the house. Everyone was safe; there was much to clean up but more for which to be grateful. 

We bought new young trees and made a Saturday trip north to plant them; but alas the apricot replacement was not one of those we found alive when we returned home a few years later.  While apricots are available in the markets, they are often either green or over ripe and generally pretty expensive.  So why didn't I promptly plant another apricot?  Let's just say it was a very busy and complicated time.

Imagine then, my delight, when in the shut-down summer of 2020 the oldest local fruit stand, which has grown over the years into a trendy expensive market, used a notorious social media platform to advertise organic apricots clearly at a "loss leader" price.  We donned our masks and headed down the road and were possessed of twenty-two pounds of blushing apricots within the hour. 

Oh, and they were good, those apricots, and we ate as many fresh as we could and made jam together in several sessions and felt pleased with the results and ourselves. 

Now I had a heap of pits. I just couldn't bring myself to toss them.  Many fruit trees grow best from cuttings, but having grown my favorite peach tree  from a pit that sprouted in my compost pile, I was pretty sure an apricot stone could yield a tree that would  carry on the most desirable traits of its parents. 

My favorite peach tree in spring 2020 bloom

 I knew that different seeds require certain conditions in order to germinate because as a child I had watched my father.  He would admire a tree in Golden Gate Park and gather some seeds and start experimenting.  He explained to me what botanists call stratification as a process of tricking the seed into waking up by mimicking the conditions of the seasonal changes of nature. I knew I had to wake my sleeping pits, stir them from their complacent dormant state. 

A quick search led me to the school of "youtube" where I found several generous instructional videos about  germinating stone fruits. One method was to put the whole pit in some soil in a bag and stick it in the refrigerator, while another proponent  said to remove the kernel from the outer shell and store them in soil in the fridge.  A third tree sprouter said to put bare kernels alone in a bag and store them in the freezer.  

So on July 27th, 2020 I did all three of those things. 

I could've checked them in August. I surely could have inquired on their well being in September.  Several weeks at low temp would have been enough to wake them, but it was October 13th before I rescued my bags of moist dirt and pits and brought them to the light of day.  The package of soil-less naked kernels is still tucked in the freezer, so that part of my experiment is on hold for now. 

I was excited to find that both whole and naked kernels were sprouting. I planted two of each and labeled the pots on 10/13/2020

On 11/03 I repotted the two viable trees, they were both from whole pits.  I think that au natural is the best way to go.  I have continued to have success with additional pits from the whole pit bag.

,

The other pots surrounding the trees have additional sprouters that I have since popped into soil.  If you try it, put the root poking out of the now cracked open pit facing down and keep them moist.  I have plastic egg crates over my pots to keep them a bit warmer but more importantly to stop the visiting squirrels from digging them up.  I have had fun gifting sprouting apricot seeds to nearby friends ... we all need something to watch grow in these strange days. And hopefully we can all look forward to apricots on our little trees, maybe three to five years down the road.  

Today, in between trying to find the hidden typos in this story of pits, cold dirt and hidden hope, I realized all these hopeful trees already need taller pots because they want to put down a nice long tap root, so I transferred them to bigger pots. 

I don't mean this post as instructions for growing stone fruit trees, there are many sources available with more and better information.  I'm just saying hello and sharing a little project that buoyed my heart of late.  I hope you're finding ways to keep as much of your life on track as possible during these prolonged and challenging days of covid related restrictions. It is so easy to get derailed.  

February 15, 2021***UPDATE***13 little trees and growing.

The Free Milk of Human Kindness ...from Silicon Valley to Rwanda

Friendship is certainly boosted by proximity, but over my lifetime there have been a number of people who I have been destined to respect and love and yet not get to have anywhere near my neighborhood.  Such are my friends Roger and Faith Shaw.

Visiting with Roger and Faith in 2007

When we lived in Carmel on the cliffside estate, our employer had us host a fundraiser for visiting Rwandan cyclists who spoke every manner of smile but very little English.   Faith, who at that time lived in San Jose, was hired to translate their Kinyarwanda so the guys could tell their stories to the  invited guests.

Faith and I had one of those instant bonds; we found that we spoke the same language indeed.  Over the next few years my husband and I had some very dear encounters with Faith and her husband, Roger. For a time we lived close enough to visit each others homes.

While time and distance came between us, for Roger and Faith left California and moved to Rwanda, my appreciation of who my friends are and what they are doing continues to grow.

I hope you will watch an unsophisticated but fascinating video of Roger, learning about his larger neighborhood and showing why he wants to give milk to Mwendo neighbor children, but before you do, from their web page  in Rwanda, here is a bit of Faith's background:

First and foremost, she herself was a refugee separated from her parents after fleeing Rwanda's first genocide. She was taken in by another family, but was shamelessly exploited. They told her that her parents were dead, that there was no hope and they forced her into servitude.
A year later, Mrs. Hindley, an English missionary rescued Faith and hid her under blankets in the footwell of a vehicle and drove her to freedom. Mrs. Hindley re-united Faith with her parents. Later, growing up as a refugee in Uganda with very little money in the family, an unknown sponsor paid her school fees. 
Faith eventually attended Makere University. One evening, outside her college dorm, she discovered an abandoned baby crying in the trash. She took him to hospital and made plans to adopt him. Unfortunately, despite Faith's efforts, the little boy died a few days later. 
Sometime after graduating, Amin's soldiers arrested Faith on trumped-up charges and held her in a cell where she was certain to be raped that very evening. However, a man who described himself as a friend of her father's saw her in jail and somehow negotiated her immediate release. Neither Faith nor her father ever identified the man.   
Faith left Uganda and moved to Kenya and took a job as a teacher. Later she won a scholarship for post-graduate education for refugees. She moved to England to become a student again. It was here that she met and married her husband, Roger. They had two daughters, Zoe & Murika, and later the family relocated to the USA. In 1994, they watched Rwanda's second genocide unfold on the TV news. It was a horrifying event resulting in the murder of 800,000 people. The aftermath was heart breaking. Among many awful tragedies, thousands of children were left without anyone to care for them. This painful reality weighed heavily on the hearts of Faith & Roger and they recalled how someone had helped Faith when she had been a child in need. They couldn't quite reconcile their comfortable family life in California with the suffering of so many abandoned children in Rwanda.

In 2000 Faith visited her homeland and saw children in need in the aftermath of war.
In 2003,  Roger and Faith bought a four bedroom house in Ruhengeri.

They hired a nanny - Judith, and a cook - Gatzinzi, and they accepted the first four orphans, Ruzindana, Anne, Mutoni & Alice. Faith's dad did a great job of running the home and being a role model for the children and staff to look up to. Sadly for all of us, he passed away in 2006. 

In 2006 they incorporated and children kept coming...if the cook
didn't find another orphan, one of the children did.  Faith sold her paintings and jewelry she made to support the children and her church helped too. She would fly back and forth from their home in San Jose, California where Roger was still working in Silicon Valley... but it wasn't the vision they had.  They wanted the children to  live as a  family and they decided together to give up their work and home in California to become  Mom and Dad to an ever growing family in Rwanda.


In 2012 they relocated the rescue home to Bugesera. The website has wonderful pictures of the home they built there and the children who are growing up. It isn't accurate to call the Ishimwe rescue home an orphanage, for the children who live there are sons and daughters.  Faith and Roger have eighteen children!


 In the years since,  Roger has built a fish farm, a whole other story in itself, to help the area be more self sustaining.   Faith started Pioneer School, a place where the Ishimwe children can learn amongst other children of the community, broadening their sense of belonging and purpose.  The Ishimwe children learn at home to grow their food, and raise animals. At school they study reading, writing, arithmetic, computers, music and art and they are learning how knowledge, work and cooperation can call forth abundance enough to share.

Which brings us again to  Roger's latest hope and his video.  The children at Pioneer School all get a big fresh glass of milk each day from the cows at the Ishimwe home.  Roger wants to bring free milk to the neighboring school and several homes where the children are not able to attend school.

After watching Roger's video, I  remembered an advertising slogan from an American bread company of the 1950's, "build strong bodies twelve ways."  We can laugh now at white Wonder Bread with its 12 added nutrients, but Roger's milk will build strong bodies and it is also likely to kindle love and good purpose in the grateful recipients.

And to think of the promise that is attached to giving even a cup of cold water to a little one.


hoping the best for you,

Jeannette
ABOUT DONATIONS!
Some people have asked if they can donate...yes, that would be lovely!
  If you click on the video link that is in the story and I will provide it again HERE you will see to the right of the video picture is a donate button through an organization that Roger chose called Generosity.   They do not charge a fee to either side, but they do make a space to give Generosity a donation as well, if you so choose.  This site requires a credit card.

I gave my donation via PAYPAL to the Ishimwe website  with a note to specify that this particular donation was for MILK MONEY  for ROGER,  You simply click on the button to make a single donation and the option for PAYPAL will come directly up as well as other choices.

Bare Bones Anatomy of a Move

There is a great antidote to times like these...when you've rolled up the rug and  are packing up and saying good-byes and wondering how you ever got so many books 

and what box you put the aspirin in..

                                         You just leave your drawers on the floor...the desk was already in the truck...and your keyboard  perched on a cardboard box

and let someone you had only met via her blog take you for a lovely walk in a canyon you have never been in before.

Nothing to do here but to wonder at the forces that shape our world...the winds off the Pacific can topiary even the Redwood trees.

                                       Yes, thank you Katie and blessings to Steve's memory.

 But back at the ranch ( think seahorses) ... that truck is waiting...to be filled to the gills and not everything we had to pack would fit in a box.  Klaas had gifted us with plants that had grown big and beautiful and we didn't want to leave those behind.

Fortunately we didn't pack alone.  David and Susan came armed with  boxes and wrapping paper and know how!

Blago got back in town just in time to make one more amazing dinner for us on the fire in front of the cottage.

Jeanette not only squeezed me onto her busy acupuncture calendar but came over after work to take a walk with me.

 Bashar, who is very dedicated to the new World Education University,  came and sat on the cliff with us.

The ever faithful Faisal hosted us at his and Bashar's restaurant, wonderful Dametra.

Bonnie and Steve met us for a lunch  out at Jeffrey's.

Artist Daria braved our rough stone paths bearing her energy giving chocolates.

 Debi and Stan stopping by with yet another present after a lovely tea in their home.

Angel helped us constantly and then his beautiful wife Victoria showed up with homemade tamales.

Yes, you all helped us to get on our way, but ironically it is also you who made it hard to leave...and yet...

                                 On Tuesday October 1st  I followed Mark who was driving the big truck, northward bound. We left  Carmel around 4:30 pm.  Our first stop was Inspiration Point on Highway 280  where we  watched the sun set over the Crystal Springs Reservoir but

we couldn't  linger as the rest stop we really needed was one exit north.  So we stopped again and that's where I broke out Daria's chocolates; I don't think I could have driven much farther without them!  

No more stops after that, but a moving truck is slow way to travel. It was after 9 pm when we pulled into the inn behind the old train station in Sebastopol.  We'd be ready to face the next stage of moving in the morning, but for the time being all we could manage to do was sleep...and we did!  In the morning we watched the sunrise above the mountains to the east of us, got coffee and drove the last little way home.

                                       It's overgrown and a little worn down in some respects, being the man who fixes everything hasn't lived here for seven years, but we are oh-so- happy to be back in our own little house.

And the weather has been so lovely that even though we aren't all unpacked we keep running outside to do a little gardening.

So that's it ...just  the bare bones of course...but I've kept you from your own glories long enough for today.

best wishes!
Jeannette

Seven Years by the Sea

There are times where it is much more likely for me to share here if I just plunge in and type as if I am not going to post anything...not even a photograph of some pretty scene like this...

Years of hand written journals,rarely shared with anyone, have created a deep demarcation in me. While it helps me to write I don't necessarily expect anyone else to find it interesting or helpful. There really are a number of roadblocks to my popping up posts; there is propriety, privacy, and...hmmm...there must be other descriptors that probably also start with a "p."  

Yes, in this world of divergent views it is easy to wonder about  "political correctness" ( I'll just leave that one sitting there in quotes...)

and of course there is the question of profundity or more likely the lack thereof. 

I often ponder the pain I see going on in our world, the lack of peace and prosperity so many experience but I don't want to simply remind others of what they also know. How to touch the giant troubles with purpose, how to inspire each other to make the world a safer and happier place ...? 

The other day four very kind neighbors, retired people, a doctor, two nurses and a military officer and expert in defense, spent the afternoon with my husband and me... they gave us a little good-bye party as we prepare to leave our job here and move home. The way they spend their free time is humbling.  Many hours are being devoted to others by these four people alone. Meals are being delivered to shut-ins, rides given to doctor visits, letters are written to  elected officials, efforts are made to understand the dilemmas of the times, docent duties are under taken for educational programs, bereavement ministry services are manned and  hospital patients are visited with therapy dogs,  (yes, even their dogs are helping!).   I'm encouraged by who they each are.

I'm reminded that the world is a complicated place and yet  simple responses are ever so helpful and they are what one can do while pondering what else can be done...when the headlines make you feel blue...

What we are doing right now is moving...and the bird house and the kitty cats are going too. 

  For seven years we have lived on an astounding  cliff

above the Pacific Ocean in a cottage from which we stewarded the gardens and oversaw the visitation of the other houses. 

It was much work. It was good.  It also feels good to be entering a new season.  While we return to our house where we lived for the 17 years prior to coming here, we know we won't be going back to things as they were. We are not quite the same ourselves.  But there is a sense of returning home after a long adventure. 

 As I wrote to another blogger who shares my love of nature, I  will miss the sudden spouts that alert me to watch for whales surfacing. I will miss the sounds of otters cracking open their dinner and miss spotting them on their backs in the beds of kelp.

 I will miss sighting the flash of dolphin fins and the orange of star fish clinging to the rocks.  I will miss the strands of pelicans flying over and the white egrets walking on the water in the groves of kelp. Seven years by the sea has been a lovely privilege and I have tried here on "bread on the water" to share the beauty of this place as a balm for others. 

Ironically, even though my watery neighborhood fits my blog name quite well, and many posts document seaside nature encounters, the inspiration for the name of my blog preceded living by the sea. In many ways the move we are about to make back up the road, north and a bit inland is just another response to the Word that tells us to "cast our bread on the water..."

I hope to post more often in the near future. I have hundreds of photos to organize and new -old vistas to capture and many thoughts to tease out and just maybe I'll type them up and deposit  them here rather than drop them in that drawer of files which I might also take the time to cull.  

But you'll understand if I disappear for a little while...yes? I hope so, because the little bit of sharing I have done here has meant a lot to me. I appreciate all of my readers, especially those of you that actually read to the end of my missives ( you must be one of those...) and those of you   who return to check up on me and leave comments and a trail back to the thoughts and pictures and hopes of your own lives.  

 So though I hope to be back when set up to post from a "new" location; for now it's time to pack it up!

with very best wishes! 
Jeannette

A Much Appreciated Rock

Recently I sent off a photo of this rock to an artist who had painted it after a visit here several years ago. 

She captured the rock  in one of its manifestations beautifully.  I mentioned to her that the rock and all the vegetation around it  has changed significantly since she had seen it and she asked me to send her another picture.  I took this one last week for her and then today I wandered around in my some- day-they'll- be- organized photographs and found a few more photos of this narrow rock  island in the southern cove. 

Looking south  in 2013

Rocks, substantial as they are,  change.  Over the last seven years I have watched the wearing down of this crop which sits centered in a tight cove with ocean lapping on both sides.  Tenacious cypress seedlings had worked their roots into fissures in the rock, growing, but miniature versions of the parent tree well rooted in soil on the cliffs above the cove.  Elemental forces, the winds, the rains, the crashing salty waves, the tremors of the earth and the roots of stunted trees  erode and weaken rock...and whatever strata is loosened or dislodged eventually slides and tumbles into the sea.

The first picture I ever took of the rock in 2006  looking south west.

In July of 2008 there was a ledge and we sat on it!

It seemed quite stable at the time.

I took this photo in a brief lull in a  storm 2008

The perch and several of the trees are gone. 2012

2013

 One of its faces of beauty was well captured by artist Sunee Jines. 

Carmel Highlands' Mists (c) Sunee Jines
                                 Prints & cards available                                                    

   Monterey Peninsula Art Foundation

            425 Cannery Row, Monterey Ca. 93940

 phone 831-655-1267

 I have been captured seven years on these cliffs of beauty ever changing. Now a season of change is upon us, and we will soon part company with the rocks of these coves.  I have a trove of photos and memories, some already shared in posts in this blog, but I look forward to more exploring while I gladly carry an inner cache of much appreciated rocks and waters.  

Ever changing Beauty 2013

                                                                 

Every Man...a Piece of the Continent

A few years back we hired an artist and a mason to fix two of the fireplaces in our employer's stone house on the cliffs above the ocean.

 Steve Gally was a friendly and very Central Coast independent kind of a guy whose talk was fast and far ranging, he was interested in the natural world and how to work with and in it, his community and people in general. He got to work when he got here and then he worked hard. He was so hyper-amped, so  excited about everything and so wanted to share, that I found myself somewhat overwhelmed by the boom of his presence, yet I always found him to have the best intentions.   

 After the job was over, he would stop by randomly with some  honey from his bees, or old veggies from the health food store that he would get for his chickens.  When he  ran into us in town he'd treat us as if we were long lost  and blurted out one day that even though we'd been customers, we were different...we were "like friends."


He told us both, more than once, that if  we ever needed any help, ever, ever, any time, to call him.

He had recently stopped by to invite us to walk with him on a ranch south of us.  He said he would be going by at least once a week  and we could come along anytime.  We looked forward to that, but that date won't  happen. We just learned that, Steve, 62 years old, died suddenly on  July 16th of natural causes at home in the garden sanctuary he was building with and for his lady, Jennifer. 

No man is an island,  entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were;  any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.  John Donne

We each have a flashlight he gave us for presents. I hope we shed a little light in his days too.  Man knows not his time.  May he rest in peace.

You can see  a glimpse of some of  the hands on doing and giving Steve was up to on Steve's blog.  

Lavendula who knows who?

                                           
                   

                                                              Lavendula stoechas


 This type of lavender is not my favorite, in fact  I am not even sure I like this variety.  I think of it as the stinky lavender and never want to bring it inside...but it is in its prime right now and glowing in the light of the setting sun it made me look and reconsider how I begrudge it its spot in the garden.

 April 15,2013 UPDATE! Thanks to friend, Harmony, who set me onto the right botanical name and an excellent web site, Mountain Valley Growers,  in her comment below, I  now know not only the name of this particular lavender, but a bit about the confusion about its identity.

 Spanish Lavender is probably what the ancient Greeks and Romans used to scent their bath water. Indeed the word Lavender is from Latin lavare (to wash). Spanish Lavender is often referred to in older publications as French Lavender (which, today, is how we refer to L. dentata). 

Once you know a botanical name  it is much easier to learn about uses and contraindications for plants as well.  I also learned it is more resinous in oils and does not tolerate harsh winters.

  According to The Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Herbs and Their Uses,  L. stoechas is used commercially in air fresheners and insecticides. Flower spikes have been used internally for headaches, irritability, feverish colds and nausea, and externally for wounds, rheumatic pain and as an insect repellent

As I said above on my picture, I know the bees like it but other insects do not and it does not surprise me that it is used in insecticides.  There are places in Australia where it has been declared a noxious weed, apparently given the right conditions, hot, dry, sunny and alkaline soils, it can really take off.
 
Well it is Monday and time to move along...but I appreciate the help I get learning and I find if I explore something in a little more depth I am much more likely to hang onto at least some of the particulars.  We live in a world that is worthy of being known and appreciated and properly cared for and I am frequently reminded of how easy it is to take things for granted.

Bumblebee Blue

And to know this love that surpasses knowledge...

Hristos voskrese   ( Macedonian )

Xristos voskres (Russian ) 

Buona Pasqua ( Italian) 

fukkatsu-sai omedetō gozaimasu  ( Japanese)

Feliices Pascuas!  ( Spanish)

 

                                                      

Of course these are the English equivalents...not using the beautiful scripts of these languages...and there are so many other languages in which these joyous proclamations are being made.     Happy  Easter!

Spring on the California Coast 2013

Flowers are blooming and the otters are having pups.

 The calendar says that it is spring,  but I hear from many people that their  landscape isn't quite  singing that song  yet...

     Here on the the coast it is getting quite springy, so
               I've  shared a little of it with you.

                                                 

                                                                          ~~~~~

One of those days!

                                                              Late afternoon light

 the sunshine beams in horizontally

                                   -  wind, sun and mysterious inclinations bend the trees -
                                             

out on the rock, a cormorant watches too

                                                              stone

                                                         and wooden rounds

                                                 
                                                    to help us climb up

                                                      and down

                                                               
                                                     sun shines on the garden shed
                                                           

                                           
                                                  soon the sea will lapse in dark light
      

                                                       but  sun still shines

                                                        up on the deck

                               and even down below it reaches up through the ravine
                                                  in the last hours before sunset.