A Follow Up on those Apricot Trees now almost ONE Year Old

In my last post,  many months ago, I chronicled my adventure with some apricot pits. 

If you would like to read about my adventure of starting stone fruit from pits, you can read about that here.

The bag of soil and pits hung out in my refrig longer than they needed to, but it was last October 2020, that I planted the sprouts in soil, making these young trees not quite one year old.  I am really pleased with their growth and have enjoyed repotting them several times as their growth spurts suggested.

I am still trying to figure out  the ideal spot in my garden so all the trees are still in pots. This one is on my deck and keeps me good company.  Many of the little trees have been gifted to grow in  friends' gardens and I hope they, my friends and the trees, are all happy.  

Wishing any readers that wander in here very best wishes as well... leave a hello if you like!  I'll likely respond. 

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 Body of the Earth

The body of earth,
our patch of garden,
makes mottled pears and
raspberry red juice run up thorny vines.
Flat white flowers turn
into strawberries.

Slowing down
time will come
a flutter of falling leaves,
short waves of heat,
strong winds,
migrating birds.
The fruits of summer,
stung by the wasps,
bitten by the squirrels,
will be gone.

Today the figs are still plumping
purple lines of sugar.
Apples sun their cheeks
for just a bit more color.

I like them all best
standing on the skin of dirt,
eating them before they know
they have been plucked.

Black Butterfly Hatches while it Rains and Blows...female pipevine swallowtail

 On January 23rd, picking out spent leaves on a potted pelargonium I snapped off a brown stem. As I went to toss the leaves in a bucket, I looked down in my hand and saw what I thought at first was a leaf rolled up. I had inadvertently plucked some little critter.  I realized it must have been attached to the stem I had broken; it was a chrysalis. I wish I had been more careful because now I couldn't string it back to the plant the way it must have neatly spun itself on a twig to swing and sway in waiting.  I brought it inside and marveled how its colors were so similar to the leaves of my plant.   I later read that they are often the color of the leaves they have eaten.

I set my displaced friend with a leaf or two in a glass jar with  a vented lid and put it on my desk.  I was pretty sure it was a future butterfly, but I hadn't had any close encounters with a chrysalis for many decades.

                     

I took a peek at it most every day. It never answered any of my questions as to whether its accommodations were satisfactory or let me know if my assurances of good intentions were penetrating.  I took this picture on January 27th.  It was hard to tell if anything was going on.  The leaf was drying up, but the chrysalis looked about the same. 

 I decided it deserved more of the plant in the jar and I nestled it on a new leaf on February 5th.  They really do have a matching color thing going on together, don't they?  I was prepared to wait. One friend suggested to me it could take months to manifest.

Then this morning, February 9th, as I approached my desk, I saw my cat standing over the jar and sniffing at the lid.  I knew at once that movement must have drawn the cat, something was changed.  I had missed the moments of emerging, eclosing, hatching.  While I had slept, the last transformations had been going on inside this quiet package.

Lifting by the stem of leaves, I helped her out of the jar right away.  I was excited and wanted to return her liberty to her at once. I took her out to the front porch and set her on the wooden arm of a chair.  The wind was blowing and the rain poured down.  What a morning for the birth of this beautiful black swallowtail butterfly.

She continued to cling to the leaf.  I picked a new wet stem of the same plant and she gravitated to that and seemed to drink.

Still in my robe, I left her on the window sill and  I went back inside.  The husk and original leaf on which she had rested, brown now, lay in the bottom of the jar.  I got dressed and went back out to check on the winged beauty.

She hadn't flown away. One could hardly blame her.  We are in the middle of what the weatherman has called an atmospheric river.  I decided she might need to shelter for a time,  so I moved the very potted plant on which we had first met up under the cover of the porch roof and set her cut branch in the living plant.

And there on a potted pelargonium on my front porch she has spent her first day.  I should go see if she is still there...It is  now 9 pm and she is still on the potted plant.  I do hope she is viable.  Perhaps tomorrow there will be a spot of sunshine, something this butterfly has to yet experience, and with wings warmed she will venture out into the garden.



FRIDAY MORN UP DATE:  Sunshine was the secret ingredient for this butterfly to take wing.   As soon as a few weak rays broke through this morn, I moved the potted plant and inhabitant into the light and several hours later my friend had flown into her life!   Maybe sometime she will make me a visit.

February 9th in a ray of morning light.

February 14th UPDATE: PROPER IDENTIFICATION AND LEARNING MORE ...

from friend Katie who has studied butterflies: 

 "We don't have black swallowtails in our part of CA.  It looks to me, you have a female pipevine swallowtail (http://butterfliesofamerica.com/battus_p_philenor.htm), which feeds only on pipevines (http://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/species_query.cgi?where-calrecnum=674). Do you have some pipevine, native or cultivated, nearby? Caterpillars of all sorts of Lepidoptera tend to roam around before they pupate, hence why you found yours in your geranium. And, they also tend to eclose early in the morning, maybe as protection from hungry birds, considering leps are so vulnerable when their wings pump out and harden.....and really you should let them rest outdoors to get the winter chill and emerge at the same time as their cohorts for mating purposes."

~Thank you Katie~  I  haven't seen the pipevine plant in our environs, but one can always stand to become more observant and it isn't as if I can trek around in all the places this beautiful butterfly can go. I wonder how far the caterpillars can crawl?  I hope she wasn't too coddled and thereby premature in my warm house...learning...learning.  It is always good to learn!

By Design, the Wonders in a Garden

One gardener's dead vines hanging from a tree is a hummingbird's swing set.

Hummingbird on a swing of dead vines in May

I can't get very close and none of my photos have quite captured it, but I see this hummingbird daily from my deck and kitchen window as it swings on dangling dead vines that escaped cleanup and trimming two years ago.  Our tenants had let vines grow crazy on all the fence lines, choking out roses and meandering into the redwoods. We pulled and pulled and got most of them out at both ends..but some were so out of reach.

 The vine remnants used to occasionally irritate me hanging down in my line of sight.

A Fuzzy Zoom

But this little bird has made me love the tangles that hang down, for everyday this bird comes and sits and swings and preens in the shade of the Sequoia tree from which the dead vines hang.  

These photos just can't convey so I just now saved my post and, camera in hand, walked into the kitchen on the chance that my little pal might be again swinging in the breeze. 

                                       

The window view

And yes, (s)he is there!

Camera to the glass...see him?

And take off!

Why have I gone to the trouble of posting these admittedly inadequate photos?  I need the reminder and plot it  here in gratitude for the sweet solace this little bird has brought me day after day. Clearly there is the reminder that many times there is purpose that we do not at first and perhaps on this side, ever see.  And then there is just the contrast...the world heats in sorrows and still the birds find a perch where they can have a quiet moment. 

And so should we...so should we. 

Broken Plate Mosaic Bird Bath ...A Garden Project in the Last Rays of Summer

Back in August we laid out our broken dishes on the garden table and began a repair on the bird bath that had both a big edge chip and a crack.  It  would no longer hold water. With summer heat and drought, I like having bird baths for our feathered friends to perch on, drink from and splash in. 

Despite our August intentions, a number of intervening realities left those dishes  spread out for several weeks, waiting on the garden picnic table like a Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

Then on the last Saturday of summer, I saw the opening...it was a day of gentle September sun and we were unscheduled. A small backyard project was just the rest we needed.

It was calming, in our somewhat fractured world, to take disparate pieces and fit them into a new coherence, to bring new purpose to objects too damaged for their original purpose, yet too pretty to just throw away.

Thinset is smeared into the bottom of the bowl.  the broken cherub
 was tried out and removed.
Thinset is nice that way...you can pull things off even after they have dried.

Mark taught me how to use his wet saw and I made some of the pieces smaller.  I plopped some thinset on the back of each piece, fitted them as shape and color seemed to suggest (and hopefully in a way the birds would like) and smooshed them into place.  

Here is my first  broken plate mosaic ready for the Thinset to dry which took over night.

It was fun. You can see we have broken a lot of dishes over the years.  I am glad I saved them. As I wiggled pieces around I remembered where or who the plates were from.  One was Mark's grandmother's and one was from my grandma.  My dad gave me some of the plates.  A few I had bought at garage sales to sit under potted plants and two of them were gifts many years ago from a boyfriend; dear people each one and I believe they all felt kindly towards birds as well.  

I  did the mosaic by myself, but when it was time to do the grout, Mark helped me...which really means, he did all the work, but it allowed me both to learn and take pictures of the process.

He had white grout, but the bird bath was terra cotta, so we added a little red to match it up better.  You pour the grout into the water in the bucket and mix it up so it is smooth and sticky.  

The goal is to spread the grout into all the empty spaces between the broken plates.

The grout tool he had was designed for larger flat surfaces, so I got one of my kitchen spatulas which worked pretty well. 

 Next step is to sponge the tile or in this case plate surfaces clean with gentle wipings with a very soft wet sponge that you keep rinsing out.

 Eventually the grout is confined to the spaces between your pieces and it is time to let it dry and cure.

 The test now was to be sure it would hold water.  It does.

So back it goes on its pedestal...to be filled it up for the birds...

And then you step back in hopes that the birds might come and use it. 

Backyard Food, Flowers and Fun...Pluck the Day

In the last week of August,  the pears on the tree sing "carpe diem."  I have read that a more literal  translation of  "carpe" than the imperative  "to seize" is "to pluck."  

"Pluck the day"... it is ripe.

Our very old pear tree is still putting forth

Early Girl lived up to her name

Tomatoes ripening on the vine is something I had nearly forgotten about the last seven summers on the coast.  We had a few red tomatoes in time for Christmas in Carmel but Sebastopol sunshine has brought forth an abundance.

The strawberries have been providing

 a daily treasure hunt opportunity.  

The Golden Delicious tree was cut in half last year by a neighbor's falling  Incense Cedar tree.  The clean up crew phoned us down in Carmel and wanted to cut the  remaining half apple tree down.  I'm so glad I didn't take their advice.  Our half-a-tree is bearing beautiful apples who sing a saucier song...and sometimes call for pie.

 and flowers...the roses are still blooming...

And all that broken pottery I saved in Mark's shop...we hauled out the box and we've begun to fix a bird bath that was broken in our absence.  This is a very experimental repair and as it's for the birds I'm hoping they they won't mind if it's more goofy than artistic.   

May we pluck the day and give thanks, while it still yet August.

May the Roses Keep Blooming

Roses

                                               and foxglove and strawberries....

These are a few of the roses in my garden .  Roses are blooming all over town and up and down the country roads.  You can click on any of these photos for a larger view...

In the neighboring town of Petaluma, I saw a tree that had such lovely flowers that it distracted me from

looking at its leaves which would have told me instantly it was a  buckeye tree.  The clue of five palmate leaves finally broke through to me. However, in my defense, this is not the native California buckeye that I  have known all my life, but a bright multi-colored showy flowering cultivar.  Once these bright flowers  had my attention I began seeing these trees all over Petaluma.   It might just have been me a having a "frequency illusion" or it may be that once someone sees these trees blooming they have to plant one too.

                                                                     Later that day a quieter smaller flower got my attention...hey look down here at your feet...watch where you are walking.   A friend had thrown open her new rental house to celebrate earning her teaching credential. The landlord mows the grasses, but it isn't exactly a lawn and there they were. Several people asked me if I knew what they were.     Brodiaea came to my mind but not quite to my tongue. The flowers were so close to the ground I wasn't sure.  So I  snapped their picture and later scoured through my wildflower books...and I think that is indeed what they are..a form of Brodiaea, little wild lilies...that can vary  from a few inches in height to sixteen inches depending on conditions.  They tend to bloom as the grasses begin drying...and you know that is what will happen next...the green grasses are going to dry.  Here in California we have had an early fast spring, very little rain, and now  lots of roses and  soon the green rolling hills of the Redwood Empire will turn golden.

There  once was a wild flower of a woman, a local musician named Kate Wolf, who sang sweetly of the golden hills of California; if you like, you could take a listen here:   the Golden Rollin' Hills of California. 

May the roses keep blooming...

~~~