The Last Days of Citrus

We had a bumper crop of citrus this year.  Since late November we have been eating tangerines.  Just last week we ate the last of them.  Not to fear.  We've plenty of navel oranges.  Big, juicy, navel oranges.  We ate a lot of tangerines this year, but we also made tangerine juice.  Last year we froze a bunch of it, but this year we didn't have much space in our freezer.  We drank all of the juice fresh.  The tangerine juice is tart and sweet!  Delicious.  The color of the tangerines and the juice itself is beautiful.

Sunday turned out to be one of the most beautiful days of the year.  As we walked around outside and observed spring taking place before our eyes, I noticed something on the navel orange trees:

The orange trees are about to burst forth with blooms!  But there is still fruit on the trees! 

In addition to the multitude of flowers on the trees that are about to open, you can see the bright, new leaf growth on the trees:

Now, I think that with the tree putting energy toward blooms and the setting of NEW fruit, as well as the tree putting out new leaves, it is high time to pick the remaining fruit off the tree and put it in the fridge.  Naturally, we had already picked all the low hanging fruit.  The remaining navel oranges were at the very top of the tree and required me getting a ladder and climbing to the top.  As I would pick the softball-sized fruit from the trees, I would toss them down and Russ and Tricia would catch them and put what would fit into a five gallon bucket.

This is the last of the fruit from our trees from last year's harvest.  It has lasted us 3 whole months.  The 2019 crop is about to set on the trees once they finish blooming.  We'll look forward to enjoying delicious citrus again from our trees in about 9 months.