Proof of Life

My poor avocado tree, which I grew from a seed and have had for many years, is not doing well. You may remember that its leaves fried in a 2 week heat wave this summer, though I watered my plants and tried to save them. I trimmed back the leaves, and have been watching to see if it might come back. There is new growth near the bottom of the trunk, but nothing higher up. What to do? It just so happens that one of my cousins knows a lot about plants, and is a Master Gardener. When I’m worried that I may have killed a plant, I consult her. So I told her what was going on, and she had me scratch the surface of the trunk, and stick my finger about an inch into the soil after watering the plant. The surface of the trunk showed dead wood, and the soil was dry. The soil had become hydrophobic, so even though I watered the plant, not much of the water was getting to the roots. To be honest, even before the heat wave, this tree was not thriving. My cousin Kim told me that I needed to treat the soil with dish soap, and also cut the trunk down to where the plant is not dead. If you’ve not heard of the dish soap treatment, you put a little bit of liquid dish soap (I used Dawn because that’s what we had) on the soil, then a bunch of water. I put maybe 8 or 10 drops around the circumference of the trunk, about half way between the tree and the edges of the pot. Then I flooded the pot to almost overflowing 3 or 4 times. After that had soaked in and drained from the bottom, I put the hose on a slow drip and left that for a couple of hours, so the roots could get a good soaking. At this point, I also gave it a bit of fertilizer. She said because of the time of year, to only give it about 1/3 of the normal amount, and then don’t fertilize again until March. My poor plant. She said it has a decent chance of surviving. Of course, if the damned squirrels eat the shoots before they get a chance to grow, then I’m not sure what I will do. Perhaps buy a net to cover it for a while. I’m hopeful, keep your fingers crossed.

Our next door neighbors have a pet lizard, Spike. Spike is a bearded dragon lizard, and is much loved by the daughters. Last week, Spike went missing, and they were scared that he had perished. Had a hawk gotten him? A car? Had someone found him and kept him? They didn’t know. Late Monday morning, I was chatting on the phone with my step-mom and I came downstairs to get a glass of water, when who should I see in my backyard, sunning himself on the bricks, but Spike! After being gone for a week! I didn’t get a picture of him, because I was on the phone, but I did pick him up and bring him to the neighbors’ house. I received a text later that the daughter cried with happiness. What a relief!

Speaking of relief, after we had our HVAC system serviced last month, I thought we were set. Then on Sunday, it just stopped working. The HVAC technician came out on Monday morning, opened up the A/C unit outside, and reset it. He said it could be a couple of things that had caused it to stop working, but he couldn’t really tell just then, and none of it was dangerous. So if it goes out again, he will come back and check a few things (high pressure manual reset something, or the condenser fan motor), but for the moment our 45 year old unit is still working. Whew!

One more proof of life…this morning I went to get my hair done, and the woman next to me was talking about her pet opossum! The neighbor’s dogs had killed the mom and the rest of the littler, but this one survived and was in front of their house. So was going to take it to a local wildlife rehab place, but she fell in love with it and is keeping it. It’s about 4 months old now, and she is potty training it. Her goal is to have it loose in the house like a cat or dog. Right now it lives in a wire cage like a pet mouse. I had no idea such a thing could happen. Good idea? IDK. But awfully cute. Your bonus content is this video of a woman who raised an opossum as a pet.