There it is, our very first baby avocado! You may remember our adventures pollinating our avocado tree by hand. Well, it worked. We are proud parents of at least one baby avocado, which will possibly become one larger, edible avocado.

This is the best thing that has happened in 2020, By Far. Really the only good thing I can remember. Well, our younger son got his Master’s degree in Vocal Performance, and we are really proud of him. Now he needs to think of a career he can ply in the post-Covid age. Our older son sheltered with us by choice for twelve weeks, and spending that sort of casual time with him was a treat. But the precipitating factor for that event also brought the end of performing arts, folk dance, and dating.

My life feels completely beyond my control, so the fact that I was able to pollinate an avocado tree by hand is very fulfilling. I’ve never really understood plants, which usually do the opposite of flourish when they find themselves under my care. I inadvertently set up an experiment proving this last year, when I acquired two dudleya plants from the Seymour Center and gave one to my botanist friend Barbara, who gave me advice on where and how to plant the one I kept. Six months later, hers had transformed into a completely different shape, doubled in size, and sprouted two 2-foot long reproductive stalks. Mine was unchanged. Later that year, she put hers in a pot for me when she moved to a different gardening zone. I planted hers near mine, having read about plants communicating underground, and since then both plants have been mostly quiescent, with the larger one actually shrinking a bit.

Our tiny back yard in California delights us because it seems to self-maintain, at least well enough for our standards, which are quite low in this area.

• Of four rose bushes, two large ones bloom riotously much of the year; one tiny one blooms but never grows, perhaps due to location; and one medium one was too close to the slider so we removed it. The large rose bushes are very woody. Is that bad?
• We have a calla lily that blooms vigorously in season, then begs for deadheading the rest of the year.
• We have four flowering bushes I can’t name that bloom most of the year. One is getting quite large, peeking through the window over the kitchen sink. All of them are much more straggly than when we arrived. We may replace some of them with Bird of Paradise, which my husband likes.
• We have two trees, one which we call The Pollinator because it attracts all sorts of flower-visiting creatures, including hummingbirds. It seems to naturally maintain a pleasing umbrella shape. The other is a smoke tree, which grows so voraciously every spring and summer that we have to have it severely trimmed in the winter. Well, we did that once, anyway.
• We had a jasmine, but its trellis rotted away and fell over, so we got rid of it. It was blooming and scenting the yard very nicely each spring until that happened.
• We have some 7-8 foot tall flowering stalks that sprout big red blooms at the top every year, than die off and lie on the ground. If we leave them lie (Yardwork? Us?), mourning doves seem to find the browning fronds useful. At least they spend a lot of time pecking and scratching in them.
• My husband had some luck with tomato plants one year, which was fun for both of us, and a fair bit of work for him. We skipped one year then tried a short-cut method this year, resulting in fewer but still yummy tomatoes.

We purposefully killed all the grass, shortly after we arrived. Grass is a desert in terms of species diversification. A literary desert, not a real one; I think a natural desert supports many more life forms than a lawn. We unintentionally killed several pepper plants and two cilantro plants. People tell me cilantro “grows like a weed.” I wish our weeds would grow like that cilantro did.

Our avocado tree, though, is the one permanent plant we have added. The three dreams we had for California were a hot tub, a Mustang convertible, and an avocado tree. The items we could buy were easily obtained. We bought the tree too, but of course the dream was that it would produce. Now it does! Here’s one more look, with my left thumb added for scale.

I can’t wait until next spring, when I will implement several improvements I have already devised for my pollinating technique. If next year is similar to this one, perhaps we will have more avocados to comfort us. Though I would chop the whole tree down in exchange for live symphonic and operatic music performances.