Citrus | Home is Where the Heart Is

There are about five Cassia bushes in my back yard. This is the first time in about three years that I can see clearly (without cataracts) with both eyes. It is absolutely amazing the brightness of these yellow flowers! They really are a pleasure to look at. There is no scent to speak of, but at the moment I have a citrus tree in bloom so there is a heady fragrance coming from the orange blossoms – which I love as long as I can smell them and go in the house. It is such a powerful aroma that too long is too much!

For more close-up macros and mosaics or collages visit Macro Monday and Mosaic Monday.

Cassia Shrubs and Cassia close-ups.

Above is my neighbors Palo Verde tree that hangs over my fence – which I don’t mind at all because it is a beautiful tree and attracts different species of chirping birds. It is the state tree of Arizona.

Below are the orange blossoms. It looks like a goodly crop of them, but you never can tell; if the wind blows hard enough and strong enough it may end up bearing only one or two fruit. I hope it produces at least a dozen fruit!

MM3

Macro Monday

Psalm 118:24 – “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Around three in the morning I took Sparky and Mandy in the backyard for their last leak before going to bed. As I shined my flashlight on our one and only “citrus cocktail” tree I spied this tiny little lime blossom and fruit, so I went inside and got my camera and took the above photo. Two days later I checked it again and the blossom had fallen off, revealing this:

I’ve searched all over and can’t find evidence of any other fruit. And actually, this isn’t when I usually smell blossoms on the tree – uh-oh! I just remembered something – about a week ago I smelled orange (or citrus) blossoms, looked all over to see where the scent was coming from, even scanned my citrus tree but didn’t see any blooms. I guess maybe the lime part of the tree was in fact blooming but didn’t see them. The reason this is called a cocktail tree is because there are four different citrus fruits grafted onto a single root stock. On my tree there is a Valencia orange, naval orange, mandarin, and a Bearss lime. It is about five or six years old and so far it’s produced two good seasons of about a dozen fruit. Except, not a single mandarin – my favorite! Hopefully, this will be a good season, as last year wasn’t – I haven’t researched it, but it seems to make good sense that fruit-bearing trees have resting seasons after a bumper crop (well, too me, it was a bumper crop!)