Kate visited me from Washington DC for a few days – it was a joy. When your children are spread over thirteen years, they don’t all get the same upbringing or hear the same stories. We went to the beach and sat on a log for a long time talking and catching up.

Kate was married just over a year ago near where we went to the beach, in Bodega, at what we fondly called The Birds Church. The fish-n-chips place where we ate in the nearby town of Bodega Bay is called The Birds Cafe. Alfred Hitchcock’s imagination has left an ongoing legacy.

Down on the shore the birds were not scary. Kate took pictures of a gull who hung around our log for quite awhile until he figured out that we didn’t have food. The sandpipers were more naturally seeking for their more natural food. It was the balmiest day I can remember on our typically frigid beaches; even the breeze was warm.

Kate helped me draft a note to leave in neighbors’ mailboxes, asking “Do you have a plum tree?” You see, I fell in love with the Elephant Heart plums that are growing at Pearl’s new house in Davis; they are the best plums I have ever eaten. Though I hadn’t given plum trees a thought before June, I’ve now got it in my head and on the landscaping plans that I will plant one of these trees in my refurbished back yard. These pictures are of fruits that I brought back from my last visit to Pearl.

They are not self-pollinating, so I either need two of them or I need to know that there is another tree in the neighborhood that can be a pollinator. Either another Elephant Heart plum or a Santa Rosa plum will do. I’d rather not have two plum trees, as my yard isn’t that big, and I am not that ravenous for plums. So I hoped to discover another suitable tree around here.

I first asked the neighbors whom I already know. The ones I didn’t know, on my street and the street behind me, I asked by means of my explanatory note, a paragraph with that grabber question at the top, which I dropped off yesterday afternoon. This afternoon two people who received the notes phoned to say that they do have Santa Rosa plums! My tree will be right in the middle of those two trees, as the bee flies.

And now I have two new friends, Rich and Dale. Dale has more than 20 fruit trees in his back yard! Rich planted his Santa Rosa plum as a pollinator for a Satsuma plum that he loved. Next summer we will get together and trade plums — yum.