Mock Orange

Since we are talking a lot about orange these days, allow me to share with you my most recent "Musings -- in the garden" essay.  My painting session today was not terribly riveting, so you aren't missing anything earthshaking on that front.

And so without further ado:

Mock Orange

Something has gone dreadfully wrong with my fruit trees.  I bought the tiny twelve inch saplings for $9.00 each at Lowe’s on special.  This was my first mistake.  But how could I resist the thought of kumquat, Mandarin orange, lemon and tangelo trees gracing the pool deck in summer and perfuming my sunny studio in winter?  I brought them home and lined them up for inspection.  Everybody looked healthy, and so I planted them in matching pots and set them outside for their first summer.  No blooms, but plenty of green leaves happened.  And then they came inside to spend the winter with me in the studio. So far so good.  After a month or so, a couple of them even bloomed!  How thrilling!

It must be said that I am not too successful with houseplants, and all the pests in town know it.  Soon I had the local tribe of aphids and spider mites move in, and that was the end of the flowering season.  Still, by the end of the winter, I was delighted that one of the trees, the Mandarin orange, had managed to set two fruits!  There they were, little green balls at the end of two thin branches.  To be honest, I can’t really call them branches.  Twigs is more like it.  I wondered how they would be able to hold up the mature fruit, but figured they would likely be sort of miniature sized, on account of the tree’s young age and all.

Summer rolled around again and out the trees went to the pool deck where it was nice and hot and Mediterranean-like.  They loved it.  More green leaves happened plus a little more height.  And those crazy oranges grew and grew.  Long about July they turned light orange.  Not much longer to wait, I thought to myself. 

Wrong.  They kept growing.  The poor stick branches began to droop holding up such weight.  Let’s give it a little more time, I reasoned.  Surely they’ll turn dark orange any day now.  Right?

That was two months ago.  I am now willing to admit the error of my ways.  First of all, I am not convinced I purchased four different fruit trees, as labeled, from Lowe’s on special.  I have a sneaking suspicion these are the ones whose grafts failed and Lowe’s had to dump them on unsuspecting gardeners, like me.  If I’m really honest, I will admit that three of the four trees I bought have wicked sharp spikes protruding from various branches, which I’ve now come to learn are evidence of rootstock suckers overwhelming the graft. 

I am also willing to admit that I am not about to harvest two Mandarin oranges.  What is growing appears to be two rock-hard mutant oranges that bear no resemblance to a Mandarin whatsoever.  They don’t have that thick, bumpy, dark orange skin with a cute dimple at the stem.  These are pale, shiny and hard, like Christmas ornaments.  In fact, the poor tree looks like something Charlie Brown would have purchased.  I might just throw some holiday lights on it and see if that improves things.  I can’t imagine what else to do, since I’ve also learned that the fruit that has been developing for nearly nine months is inedible.  It is called a ‘sour orange’, in fact. 

Time to start over, I say.  But this time, I’ll head to the nursery instead of the bargain close-out shelf at Lowe’s!