When Life Gives You Lemons

One of my own favorite sayings is "bloom where you're planted."  I try to live by that, even though I've been transplanted a time or two. The latest transplanting took place nearly four years ago when my husband accepted a job in California. The weather here is lovely; there are none of the extremes we experienced in Tulsa, such as ice storms, hail storms, tornadoes, extreme summer heat and humidity. It does get hot here, but with lower humidity it doesn't seem so bad. Our house seems to do a great job of staying cool too.

One of the first things we wanted to do when we moved was to plant some fruit trees. First we planted a Cara Cara orange tree and a Key Lime tree. Next came the cherry tree, which apparently has grafts of several different varieties of cherries. All of these trees are self-pollinating, which means we don't need two of each to get fruit.

After three years, the orange tree was the only one to bloom, but when it did, it was covered with blossoms. We waited excitedly all summer, watching our baby oranges grow. And wow, did they grow! They got huge!  Now they are ripe, ready for harvesting, but something isn't right. They're about the size of a large grapefruit, yellow, and roughly pear-shaped. The nursery where we bought the tree was surprised, and could not identify the type of fruit, but agreed that it definitely was not a Cara Cara orange.

Now for a taste test.  After peeling away about one and a half inches of rind, I got to the juicy, yellow center, which contains lots of seeds. The sections are separated by a very tough membrane which isn't easily pulled away. It tastes a lot like lemon, very tart.

 I included an orange in the photo for comparison. It looks like the tree we have is a pomelo.  Guess I could make some lemonade. Or would that be pomelade?