Lovely New Trees and Such

There is a commercial fruit tree nursery not far from here.  Twice a year, they open their doors to the individual customer.  Most years, I kind of drive by the sign and don't think about it, but a couple of times we've gone down. 

Yesterday, I saw the sign as I drove by to work, and I called my husband to ask him if he'd go and pick up a Meyer lemon, a curry tree, and "anything else that looked good."  He came home with Mountain Apple, mulberry, clove, Meyer lemon, curry, Brazil plum (he forgot we had one and it isn't doing great), and white Sapote.  He also brought the sale list which,  when I perused it, indicated that there were also black pepper vine and fig, so we went back today, and also bought two more orange varieties and a couple of apple bananas, as well.  We have several varieties of banana, but apple bananas are a favorite. 

It's all pretty exciting.  They've had cinnamon in the past;  I was disappointed that they didn't have it this time, and the vanilla orchid looked pretty wonderful, but it was very expensive.  The clove and curry trees smell lovely.  We've bought curry in the past and found out that horses love it so much that they will eat the entire tree down to the ground - which is something you more expect from a goat than a horse! Now all I need to do is get some olena (turmeric) and I can have a mean curry - I do love curry. 

The sale cut a little into the greenhouse budget, but I think that having fruit and spice bearing trees (and a vine, in the case of the pepper) is a good tradeoff. 

Once we've planted all these, plus the lilikoi that I've sprouting in the small greenhouse, we'll have two kinds of lemons, a lime, four orange trees of various varities (some spring fruiting and some fall), grapefruit, tangerine, avocado, three or four kinds of bananas, curry, clove, pepper, Brazilian plum, acerola cherry, mulberry, fig, and Sapote.  Oh, and one apple that might make it, olives, and one mango that the sheep ate and we hope will recover.  If all of these fruit at different times, we'll be quite blessed with a variety of healthy food sources that need less maintenance than a seasonal garden, which sounds good with my nuts schedule.

I needed this plant sale to make up for a truly horrible week and having to get up at 3:15 am  this morning to get my son and his two friends to the bus for their Kona track meet.   Being able to go back to sleep until 8:00 (while horrifyingly lazy) and then being able to go to the fruit tree sale and actually being able to afford these trees was a real pick-me-up.  Plus, my husband has gotten a few little jobs in the last week, so I know there will be a bit more coming in. 

Well, enough talking about it - I need to get out there before it starts raining again.  One thing I learned at the fruit tree nursery is that I need to fertilize my citrus every month (or even every two weeks during rainy times) instead of every 3 months!  I also want to make a bunch of pancakes, waffles, and English muffins to throw in the freezer.  Time to get moving!