Monday, April 29, 2002

Fruit Salad Trees

Brad is thriving and may soon have back yard friends.

The wonders of grafting have produced trees that bear several types of fruit. An ABC article provides details.

Example:

A citrus version grows oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, tangelos, lemonades (a rounded fruit that's sweet like lemonade) and grapefruit. A stone fruit tree yields peaches, apricots, plums, nectarines, peachcots (a cross between peaches and apricots) and peacherines.

The Fruit Salad Tree Company of Australia prices their trees by the graft. The Citrus and Japanese Pear sound like winners.

In other yard news, the elephant ears have gone from bulbs to foot and a half plants in less than two weeks. Almost scary.

The bougainvilleas have recovered from the shock of planting and are putting out fresh hot pink blooms. I was actually a little worried about them, but they're recovering nicely.

The clematis are a good nine inches tall -- also phenomenal growth. They are set to intertwine with the bougainvilleas. Two colors -- a rich burgundy and an icy blue.

I've thrown in the towel and reconciled myself with mowing the front every three days.

As psychic compensation, the back is a jungle.

The dandelions have defied the weed 'n feed. They are now three feet high, but not a very healthy green. More of a sickly purple -- but yet they still grow. So much for modern science. This is after three applications -- each twice as strong as the previous.

The flowers are yellow and I'm pretending its like the swaths of highway median sown with wildflowers. Do not mow -- flowers growing...

posted by Bohica at 12:24 PM