One Word

Limes

One word:  Tequila!

These may not look much like it, but these fruits are the harvest from our lime tree.

We've had really strange luck with the three dwarf citrus trees Cindy bought four years ago.  She thought she was buying a Meyers Lemon, a seedless lime and a Blood Orange tree (see Of Lemons And Limes), but the presumed lemons steadfastly refused to turn yellow, so we eventually concluded they were actually the limes.

Then, about a year and half ago, some critter stripped almost all the leaves off both this tree and the presumptive Blood Orange as well (see New Garden Mystery).  As intriguing as the image of the elderly neighbor next door running amok with her garden shears was, we eventually concluded that it most likely was a deer that did all the damage, especially after another deer crashed through the window of the IHOP a couple of miles down the San Diego River from us.

The trees recovered and actually came back more vigorous than before, but so far this is the only one that has produced very much fruit.

Although they are yellow, they really are limes.

So now the question is what to do with them.  Did anyone say Margaritas?

Of Lemons and Limes

Cindy has been nursing her Meyers Lemon tree along for about a year now. It's never looked particularly robust; the leaves have had a tinge of yellow, but the fruit stubbornly refused to change from green to yellow.

So we repotted it a couple of months ago, hoping that would do the trick. We also repotted the lime and the dwarf orange tree at the same time. Actually, we didn't change the pots, we simply took them out of the pots, drilled more holes in the bottoms of the plastic pots they were in and put them back to improve the drainage in the pots.

But still no lemons. Lots of green fruit, but nothing that looked like a Meyers lemon. Hmmm. Cindy, recalling her friend Lorraine's question, "why don't you pick those limes?" checked the blossoms. Pink blossoms. Lime blossoms. And, of course, the blossoms on the presumed lime tree are white: lemon blossoms?

So the question is: did we mix them up when we repotted them? Did the nursery mix up the labels?

Another question: what kind of lime is this? It has seeds, when we were expecting seedless limes, or at least fewer seeds.

At least now we've got plenty of limes. Something tells me it's margarita time....