For Once, Happy News!

Our Meyer lemon tree, loaded with fruit. You might remember how sad I was last Christmas when I mentioned we'd lost our lemon, grapefruit and orange trees to citrus greening disease. My guy stopped watering and fertilizing them, and we faced the unhappy job of digging them up and burning them. Only we got busy and my guy kept putting it off, as he was hoping a treatment would be developed that we could use to try to save them.

Our white grapefruit tree, also loaded with fruit. While we were busy, all the signs of citrus greening gradually disappeared. The trees thrived. The orange tree put out dozens of flowers for the first time in years. By the middle of summer all three trees had lots of fruit on them.

Our Valencia orange tree, likewise loaded with tons of fruit (the most out of all three trees.) My guy did more research, and it's possible that what we thought was citrus greening was a reaction to him over-fertilizing and over-watering. It could also be an iron or nitrogen deficiency. Anyway, since he left the trees alone almost all of the yellow leaves are gone now, and they have more fruit on them than any other year in the past. We don't know for sure (I'm still trying to find a place to test them), but odds are they didn't have citrus greening.

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Better than Fried

I cut some chives from the kitchen garden to make garlic-chive baked fries for dinner. This is a great side dish for veggie burgers. Click here for the recipe from Taste of Home.com.

Stuff

After finding this Caron one pound skein of lovely peach yarn in my thrifted lot I raided my stash for two cakes of Mandala in Pegasus, which matches it perfectly. For practice and hand therapy I'm going to make another Worth Street Afghan with this free pattern , but this time I'll use the yarn that was recommended for it plus the one pound skein. I'm not quite ready to do the vintage/recycled linen quilt I had planned (still a bit too nervous about the idea), so I'm going to use some color therapy and make a quilt from these thrifted green fat quarters. I considered doing another Yellow Brick road patchwork pattern, but I might go with a split rail fence like this one.

In the Kitchen Garden

Our strawberries are taking over the kitchen garden, but I don't mind. This week I want to make some strawberry banana nice cream (a vegan version of ice cream) and maybe a chocolate cake with berries and cream for the topping. There's thyme in the garden now, too, which I'll dry and jar for cooking along with the chives and the oregano. Next we'll plant cucumbers, as I use a ton of those in our salads and for snacks.

Rayen

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