Sunday Afternoon in California

A couple days ago I wrote a little essay in which I expressed my concern at how many oranges there were, unharvested, just in my neck of the woods (Escondido, California, a suburb of San Diego). I pointed out that just in my back yard alone, there were several orange trees, one of which was heavily laden with oranges; so much so that the branches were almost touching ground due to the weight of oranges.

I opined that if I had a tree like this, with, perhaps, hundreds of unharvested oranges, and given that San Diego County has a humongous amount of orange (and other citrus) trees, there appeared to me to be a tremendous waste.

Here, just for example, is one of our two trees:



Note the branches touching ground due to the weight of the fruit.

I, being the fine community servant I am, grabbed about a dozen plastic bags and decided to harvest the oranges, thus relieving the strain on the tree, and giving a great many oranges that could be donated to the food bank, or, somehow, put to good use.

Unfortunately, looks are deceiving. After climbing the bank of ice-plant, and after beginning to harvest, I noticed that about 90% of the oranges were not yet ripe. From a distance they had that lovely orange color, but when you were up close you could see the top half of the oranges were still somewhat green, not yet having the full orange displaying the full color of orange. I harvested, perhaps, two dozen that were clearly ripe . . . and opted to leave the rest a bit longer, giving them and ol' Mr. Sun the chance to do their job.

Still, the thought troubles me that there are other folks, neighbors of mine even, who have orchards of orange trees. And they are not harvesting them. I'm assuming the market price is too low to make it profitable to hire folks to come in and harvest the fruit and take them to market. Now, however, given the terrible tragedy in Japan, I imagine this fruit could be put to good use.

Just a thought.

On another note, many of you have asked that I post more photos of my little imp, the princess who has stolen my heart, lil Miss Trixie. Your wish is my command.
Here she is, by popular demand.







What you cannot see is the wagging of her tail, which is almost constant; particularly, whenever daddy is within sight. (I think she loves me!)