Eros and Thanatos among the Pawpaws in July

This July, out on the front porch and in the yard, we've got eros (the drive to life) going up against thanatos (the drive to death). It's all condensed into this image: the first flower stalk ever to show up among our hens-and-chicks, trying to out-scream a coyote skull (which W picked up in the San Rafael Swell) that bears its teeth among the adjacent pot full of hens-and-chicks.

Like I say, it's all condensed in the image of the flower and the coyote skull, so if you've found that condensations are sufficient for you, you can stop reading now.

Last July we had some leaf problems on our pawpaw trees, and this July the leaf problem have returned, though not in such force (yet) as last year. Last year the leaf problems didn't seem to do much damage: the Wells (which had the worst case of this mode of thanatos) is following eros in producing a lot more fruit this year, so no real ill effects that I can see from one year to the next. And no ill effects in terms of fruit production, which is the thing (sorry to be so mercenary) that I care most about with the pawpaws.

Look at this big cluster of Shenandoah pawpaws in the foreground (eros): but wait, the one that is at the top of the cluster isn't attached--it's a windfall (thanatos) higher up on the tree. It didn't quite make it to the ground but instead found a temporary home among the still-living. It's a "pawpaw ghost," cousin of the more famous "cherry ghost."  

In the winter I bought some citrus plants (Meyer lemon, Persian lime, Flame grapefruit, and Moro blood orange) and kept them on the window sill in my office. But I wanted them to get some sun over the summer so I brought them home and have kept them on the porch. Rather than them getting sun, the sun got to them: it caused almost all of them to lose up to half or most of their leaves (thanatos). But the Persian lime, in spite of losing half of its leaves, has gone ahead and blossomed (eros). The blossoms don't smell as good on the front porch as they did in my office. There's no mysticism here: it's just a question of dispersion and concentration of the scent, which is divine (wait, I guess there is some mysticism here).

Among the seedlings (seeds harvested in 2015 and germinated in 2016), several are thriving (eros) while the one in the foreground spontaneously dropped all its leaves (thanatos). Who knows why? And who knows how close its peers (or any of us) are to spontaneously following it?

The most advanced of the germinating seeds of this year has risen from the ground with its head stuck in the seed casing. This morning I was concerned that it might need help so I tried taking the casing off the plant to reveal it's waiting leaves. But instead, once I removed the casing, all that was left was some white flaky gunk. I might win some (eros) but I really lost one (thanatos). 

The Shenandoah had a phenomenal setting of fruit this spring (plug in the life-oriented word here), but it's been losing a lot of those fruits (plug in the death-oriented word here): there are 21 windfalls on the porch and 6 others that I threw away before I became dedicated to saving the windfalls. This year I've only been giving extra water (beyond the sprinklers) to the 2nd-years (the Mango and the Susquehanna), and now I wonder what would have happened if the Shenandoah (in its fifth year) had had some extra water...could it have held on to these lost ones? 

Updates from a Utah Pawpaw Orchard

There are several people who grow pawpaws in Utah and who have pawpaw orchards that are about the size of ours. (Scroll down to the comments section of this 2015 blog post to hear from some of the pawpaw growers of Utah.)

This is a report on our particular orchard (consisting of three fruit-bearing trees, two pre-fruiting trees, thirteen seedlings, and forty planted seeds, some of which have already germinated).

On the fruiting trees: A little while ago I told you that the Shenandoah (five years old) is carrying about 65 pawpaw fruits this year. I thought I was reporting this figure after it had already dropped the fruit it wasn't going to carry. But I was wrong. We've had some high winds and a week or so ago it dropped six pawpaws, taking the total down to 59 fruits.

Here are the pawpaws, thrown before their time, cradled in W's hand. I'm not posting the pic with his face because he's smiling while holding them, which doesn't show the proper decorum.

And then yesterday we also had some high winds and we lost twelve more fruits from the same tree, taking us down to about 47 fruits on the Shenandoah.

These windfall pawpaws are next to the forty seeds we planted in March 2017, seven of which have germinated and many more of which will germinate in the coming month. 

As for the pre-fruiting trees: you'll recall that last month I reported that a deer had munched the top off of the Mango cultivar. The pawpaw tree knew what happened and knew what to do once its terminal leaf bud was removed. It chose another leaf bud to be terminal and has kept on growing up. And then you'll see right about in the middle of the pic there's a leaf that was half eaten and so the pawpaw activated a previously dormant leaf bud and turned it into two small leaves. They say "broccoli has an IQ of 10"--I think the pawpaw is even smarter, with an IQ of maybe 15. (Oops--sorry about that misplace link on the "IQ of 10" bit; here's the actual link on broccoli.) 

On Saturday we didn't just sit around the yard pining for the pawpaws to ripen in September. We drove over to the High Uintas and hiked to some high mountain lakes and fished. Here's a boulder field, immediately above one of the lakes, still with snow covering a lot of it.

Once we got off the road and started hiking, we didn't see anyone all day long (we went to lakes that don't have trails to them). But as I walked through the boulder field, I found a little egg abandoned amid the granite and lichen.