Lately, I am inclined to wonder whether I would get around to blogging at all if it were not for the commitment of 'Team Up Thursday'!
This week, JoLyn and I played with the theme ' Yellow'. That's her beautiful Idaho forsythia on the left and my sad, single grapefruit off our sad little tree, on the right. We haven't fiddled with the colour at all. The yellows are just that yellow!
Our grapefruit tree was left behind by the former owners of our house who decided at the last moment that they couldn't be bothered trying to load the half wine barrel tub it is growing in, onto the removalist's truck. It has struggled with our lack of attention ever since. It rarely flowers and has only fruited once. That time, Small Boy and his mate knocked the nearly ripe fruit off with a cricket bat. I must admit I was inclined to do the same thing to portions of their anatomy; however this year I put a whole lot of peel around it and decided to combat drought by using a rudimentary drip watering device. I was rewarded in spring with a mass of blossom and, eventually, a whole little tree full of miniature green fruit!
Unfortunately, I came out one day to find the entire crop had been decimated by white fly or aphids or something. And I couldn't even blame the children! Imagine my excitement on finding one, lone survivor a few weeks later. I was sure it would suffer the same fate as its predecessor so whenever a cricket bat or basketball made an appearance in the backyard I would erupt from the depths of the house and fling myself in front of the precious swelling orb, ready to take the proverbial cricket ball 'bullet' on its behalf.
Somehow it survived and I captured it in all its radiant, yellow glory, moments before picking it and reducing it to a glass full of exquisite juice. 'Such is life' my poor little grapefruit buddy.
For more double delights, click over to Melody, Megan or the flickr photopool and bask in the combined creativity.
8 comments:
I love the way you run things! Nothing is getting between you and your harvest!
I have to admit I am so jealous--I would love to have a grapefruit tree growing in my yard. We have seven (yikes) apple trees in ours. By the end of the growing season, I'm so sick of apples I'm giving them away right and left!
I love how our yellows turned out--it's funny we both picked nature. Another pair in the group did yellow this week too--and they both did clothes!
Mmm...yellow. I just keep singing that Coldplay song "Yellow" in my head. The color is brilliant!
I would be protecting that tree with my life...
I would love to have a grapefruit tree too! I don't even like grapefruit. I just love the look of fruit trees. And to have a whole tree with all that yellow. Bring it back to well for me. Love the yellow dip. Great job, team.
One grapefruit is better than no grapefruit I always say. Remind me to bring y'all some oranges when they get ripe in a month or so.
Oh, it's a PRETTY grapefruit! It reminds me of some fruit postcards I was looking at on ebay (wedding stuff, not even worth asking about). Nice photos!
So sunny! We have two forsythias and we love them. I wish I could say we had some grapefruit as well, but alas no. We do have two apple trees, though, like JoLyn. Well done!
OK... all this gardening, and dealing with pests reminds me of what I have ahead of me! Why is it so dang hard just to eek food out of the earth? The grapefruit color is amazing... is it ready to pick, will you eat it? Maybe next year, you'll be rewarded with more?!
Beautiful photos, ladies!
I love the story around your poor little grapefruit. I have an apple tree that suffers from similar inattention. We've had it for 5 years and it has yet to produce even a blossom. I'm not so it is even an apple tree at this point!
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