Growing Growing Growing!

So far in this blog I have focused on the kids, Paul, and myself and my thoughts from time to time. I’ve even posted about the cat and the (former) fish. But today I’m going to take this blog to a whole new level of excitement… I’m going to write about the plants and trees in our yard! You can interpret this as meaning “no news is good news” since I’d much rather post about plants than a lot of other things that have gone on this year!

Back in March I posted this post about gardening and I promised to give an update later in the year. Unfortunately, Brigid’s little sprout didn’t make it very far. Growing things has been a huge learning experience for us here in Arizona – and I’m not just talking about the kids there… So I thought it was about time to take you on a tour of the other living things we care for here at home, only these things we can eat!

The children just aren’t ripe yet… bwaaa hahahaha…

First, a little history. We bought our home about 4 years ago from a family that adored planting fruit trees around the yard. You may have noticed from pictures I’ve posted in the past, our yard isn’t exactly very large to begin with. Growing in our little yard were 2 orange trees, 2 lemon trees, a peach tree, a grapefruit tree, a plumb tree and an apple tree! At first I was really excited, since I had never had fruit trees before, other than the occasional apple tree. But when spring hit, we realized quickly there was no way on earth we could consume that much fruit! Fruit trees that aren’t picked subsequently drop their fruit, and nobody loves dropped fruit more than the great big rats that invade people’s roofs. This was turning into a recipe for disaster! It was an astronomical task trying to keep the yard clean everyday, and there’s nothing more annoying than trying to clean prune juice off of pavement.

Of note as well, Arizona does not have a natural climate to support apple, plum and peach trees. This is a desert! Those are fruit trees that require a great deal of water and humidity. I could just see the environmentalists who support natural desert landscaping sneering if they took a peek at this year.

Although the people before us obviously loved planting these trees, they didn’t take the extra effort to properly care for them. They planted them all too close together, so they were choking each other out. I don’t like killing trees, but the deed had to be done. So Paul got his hack-saw out and removed the apple, peach and plumb trees and one of the 2 orange trees that wasn’t doing very well. Now we could focus ourselves on the citrus that we had remaining!

Back to our little yard tour now. I will start first with our struggling little garden. As you can see, Mr. Tomato plant is actually producing some red ripe tomatoes there! However, he doesn’t look so healthy. He is getting attacked by some mysterious mold that we’ve tried everything to get rid of. For now we’re just trying to get him to struggle along long enough to ripen the rest of the tomatoes that are there.

Next is our strawberry plot. This is not strawberry season, so they’re laying there rather flat and dormant until spring. I expect a good crop this year if we can keep the birds away!

And now to the fruit trees! Here is our one remaining orange tree! This tree is very popular! You can see the oranges are starting to ripen. They will be ready in about a month. They aren’t quite as big and juicy as the ones you get in the store, but they are extremely sweet and delicious. I think they’re actually more of a decorative variety, but they still taste good.

Next to the orange tree is lemon tree #1. The poor tree is so full of lemons that an entire section of the tree actually came crashing down this week! You can see the cracked branch in the picture. It’s a shame this happened before the lemons ripened. I’m leaving the branch for now since it’s connected enough to keep the lemon’s still alive, and Brigid is thrilled that she can actually reach them.

Over there are our other lemon tree and our grapefruit tree. The grapefruits are extremely huge! I’m not a grapefruit fan, but Paul likes them and usually eats them all.

A couple years ago we had an automatic watering system installed, so other than picking up fruit off the ground every weekend, there’s not much work involved. We do use a lot of water (ignore the pool sitting there… ahem…) but at least I can justify it in that we actually consume the fruit we’re producing. They’re not just for decoration. Occasionally we’ve even had a neighbor come by and meekly ask if they could have some lemons, and we’re always happy to share. If only we could share them with all our friends and family!