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Saturday, March 02, 2013

Spring is springing!

I love Saturdays in springtime!  Yep, it's spring down here in Smogville.  It was above 80 today, clear and perfect.  And, our orange trees are blooming, so the entire backyard is perfumed with citrus blossoms.   I celebrated this delightful day by massacring the crabgrass in my backyard.  It was the horticultural equivalent of an 80s slasher flick, except it was too hot to wear a hockey mask, and I used a shovel instead of a machete.

I was too busy committing mass murder to take any garden pics, but I have a few from a couple of weeks ago.  Here's our peach tree in full bloom:


I don't know why more people don't plant fruit trees instead of ornamentals.  This tree is definitely pretty enough for the front yard, as lovely as any dogwood or flowering plum--but it also makes tons of yummy peaches.  Here's a closeup of some flowers:
See?  Every bit as gorgeous as the purely ornamental trees.

Speaking of ornamental, here's our Indio mandarinquat:
As you might guess, a mandarinquat is a cross between a mandarin and a kumquat.  It makes good-sized, teardrop-shaped fruit that you eat like a kumquat, rind and all.  My husband loves them.

OK,back to the flowers.  Here's our Dorsett Golden apple, happily blooming away:

And now for something completely different... My husband just wandered in and did an impression of manure spreading as line dancing to a Billy Ray Cyrus song (you don't really have to ask which one, do you?).  I really should change the name of this blog to Gardening in Absurdia, because that's definitely where I live.

Happy spring from your absurd rainy day gardener!

3 comments:

Erin said...

Gardening in Absurdia, ha! I love it. I'd not heard of mandarinquat trees before; how intriguing! Good luck with the crab grass fight. :)

Jackie Oliver said...

This is such a beautiful tree! I am a little bit in love with oriental trees like this. The blossoms are are beautiful, they freshen up the entire yard. I would absolutely love to have something like this in my front yard. It would make it so much more cheery.


http://www.dinsan.com.au/projects/contract-growing.aspx

Unknown said...

Hi Janet. Nice blog! Do you have any mandarinquat seeds available by any chance?

Kind regards,

Sean :)