When do orange trees normally start to bloom? And when do they bear fruit? Before you say, “You don’t know that?” our answer is, “Yes, we don’t know. That’s why we’re asking.”

Our property has three orange trees. One looks like it’s nearly dead, yet it has popped a few fruits over the past year. Another looks old and tired and even struggling to produce fruit. Yet it does. And the third tree, which is in the middle of our backyard, and which I fertilized last spring, is also not so great at producing fruit. But it does.

We are not gardeners. In fact, we’re horrible at keeping the vegetation we own in decent shape. There must be neighbors and gardening experts out there who think we’re criminals when it comes to the treatment of our trees, lawn and hedges. Well, right now things are looking shabby. But we have promised ourselves that we’ll be better at this in 2019. We don’t really make resolutions in the new year anymore, as you probably know from our previous post. But we are promising ourselves to be better caretakers and stewards of our property. Why own a house if you’re not going to be good to it?

So this morning, we decided to get out there and take off all of the remaining oranges. The combined loot from all three trees came to 110 oranges.

And now we’re wondering what we’ll do with what Mimi has called “the swarm of oranges.” We’re wondering if we’ll do more than make freshly-squeezed orange juice.

Time to search for recipes and ideas…