Confusing Season

   I am a tad confused about the growing season this year.  Perhaps I should say, I think my citrus trees are a tad confused!  A couple of months ago, the Satsuma trees bloomed.  Granted they did not have the number of blooms that covered them in years past but I figured this was due to the ice storms during the winter.  All of the citrus trees took a beating causing some to completely die so I was elated just to see leaves much less, blooms!  Still, the blooms were scarce and tiny fruits were scarcer.   The grapefruit trees followed suit and bloomed in early spring with very few actual fruit setting.  Now, I am greeted by the familiar scent of citrus blooms once again as I walk through the garden.  Here in late June, the kumquats are speckled with their snow-white, sweet-scented blossoms! Have they lost their senses?

  These kumquat trees are actually seedlings that popped up from discarded seeds.  Mark and I had picked the fruit from my Uncle John's place years ago.  The little globs of gold were chopped and seeded to make marmalade. That, my friends, is one tedious job!  Since the fruit are so tiny and each contain several seeds, it takes forever to get through even a gallon bucketful!  Still, we do it every year since the marmalade tastes out of this world!  The seeds from each marmalade-making session are toted out to the compost where hundreds of them sprout.  Mark and I planted seven trees in a row some twenty years ago and now they provide us with tons of our own fruit!

  By the looks of it, we should have a bumper crop of the tiny, marble-sized fruit.  (If the blooms actually set fruit.)  That presents us with another tedious chore...picking the fruit.  Each bush is loaded with large (two inch) thorns!  To get to the teeny-tiny fruit, one must brave being viciously stabbed!  I hate to even think of the stab wounds that I have received in the past!  Hey!  But what am I thinking?  Those tiresome jobs all occur in late fall!  Right now, I just have to enjoy the glorious fragrance that floats about the gardens and count my blessings. Perhaps I shall get some fruit after all is said and done!  Loving me some kumquats!