I’m lucky that my mom lives only about 38 minutes from our home which makes for frequent visiting. That’s especially great when my mom is one of my daughter’s favorite people – Nana is big fun. Part of that Nana-fun extends beyond Nana to include her house with four dogs and a crazy yard of colors and imagination. The backyard is of decent size and filled with rocks, flowers, bird houses, bird feeders, bird baths, windmills, tons of wind chimes, tinsel on the trees, holiday lights on the trees year round, and what’s turning out to be an organic citrus orchard.
Oh, she has a toad-mart, too. See?
And a giant turtle is always fun.
Truly, the yard is magical for my 4-year old daughter. I can imagine the fun she has running around the little rock paths and ducking between trees. Big organic citrus trees.
There used to be just a couple of trees, but in mom’s effort to get more shade in the backyard, she’s planted more trees and opted for citrus because you can never have too many lemons or limes, right? Well, maybe, but she’ll never admit it.
Some of the ways I’ve enjoyed her organic citrus this year:
- Fennel and orange salads.
- Lemonade sweetened with stevia and/or raw honey.
- Meyer lemon in my mineral water including the zest (I love Gerolsteiner mineral water, it’s especially delicious to wash down Justin’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups) – not that I eat those often. ;)
- Lime juice in my green juices and smoothies.
- Lemon Curd that I learned to make in culinary school.
- Citrus in my herbal teas.
I do love Mom’s organic citrus trees.
In the winter, you simply walk into the back yard and grab a juicy sweet orange to enjoy fresh from the tree.
Or a lemon.
Or a meyer lemon.
Or a lime (oops, neglected to get a photo of that one.)
Or a grapefruit.
That’s not even all. She has three trees on the side of the house with citrus. It’s become an organic citrus orchard at mom’s. No scurvy happening over there.