hrj

I got a lot of good suggestions for my tree brainstorming, so rather than reply to individual items, I thought I'd bring it together in a new entry.

blaurentnv suggest an olive. Olives would definitely do well here (although not as fabulously as they did in Davis!), but they're very messy trees. If they olives themselves are squishing underfoot, then birds are eating them and shitting olive-colored stuff on available surfaces. And to be edible, I'd need to put in significant work. (I cured some olives once as an experiment -- I think they came out ok, although I wasn't as used to the flavor of Greek-style olives at that time and wasn't sure I'd done it right.)

wulfsdottir suggests avocados (sorry, no -- there's an avocado next door and I already have enough leathery, non-decomposing avocado leaves to deal with) or walnuts (only if I want to plant yet another "squirrel feeder") or pears -- the last seconded by

kaththeamac and by

roswtr in the more specific form of wardens. Nice idea -- especially if I can find a multi-variety graft like I did for the cherry. (Helps with pollination plus deliverying more than one type of fruit.) While I enjoy pears, I find I don't normally end up buying many (partly because store pears are always under-ripe), so it's quite possible that a pear tree would satisfy my entire needs for the year, which is always nice. I'm a little less inclined to replace the tree with another apple (as

helblonde suggests) simply because my experience is that store apples (around here) tend to be as good quality as homegrown, and I can get pretty much any apple variety you can think of at Berkeley Bowl. Mom suggests a macadamia nut tree, but again I worry that I'd just be growing squirrel food. (I currently have two hard-shell almond trees and the squirrels get about 80% of the crop, if only because they're willing to take them green.) To

naadhira, you're right about there being nothing like an apricot ripe from the tree (although I've gotten some very ripes ones from the store regularly), and I'm pretty sure it's warm enough for apricots here -- I believe the neighbors had one a number of years ago. And I may be worrying too much about the potential for cross-infection by lingering peach curl. So maybe I should consider that more seriously as well. And I checked out One Green World which reminded me that medlars are another item to consider -- being in the category of "medieval European fruits that it's hard to find in the store". I might also consider a Seville orange (for cooking projects, not for juice or straight eating). If I can find a dwarf variety, it could go in the line-up of dwarf citrus that stand beside the deck posts. (Well, ok, the lemon seems to have forgotten that it's supposed to be a dwarf, but the lime does its duty nicely.)

So there you go: thinking about a pear (multi-graft if possible), medlar, or apricot. And keeping my eyes out for a dwarfed Seville orange for a different spot in the yard. Of course, this is all thinking ahead to bare-root planting time.

Today's goals: shop for curtain hardware and finally sew the curtains for the living room. (Including the thermal curtain to go across the doorway to the stairs, so that winter heat doesn't always end up upstairs.) Also start tackling the contents of the two bedroom closets. And sort out the assorted weathered-lumber-to-be-gotten-rid-of into painted and untreated and cut it down and bundle it for the Big Garbage Pickup. Box up the books-to-be-gotten-rid-of that are of heraldic interest to take to the next heralds' meeting. This should bring the books-to-be-gotten-rid-of down to a single book case. Of that, about a third are clearly trashcan-bound; a third might bring trade credit at Moe's Books; and a third are more in the realm of donation to a charity booksale. There are still a couple of items arcane enough to be saved for the right home: specifically, bound photocopies of a couple of Welsh texts (an edition of the ap Huw manuscript and a collection of medieval grammatical treatises).