Lemon Fruit and Flowers

One of the things I love about our meyer lemon tree is that it can have fruit in all stages and flowers going at the same time. 

Gorgeous!

We have 6 ripe fruit on it right now [the bungees are to keep the branches upright until we take the fruit off.

The fruit will stay fresher a lot longer if we just leave it on the tree.   It's ripe when it's canary yellow.   They're almost ready....

The flowers smell sooooo good. 

I hand pollinate with a little paint brush every morning when I go out to the studio.

I've got three more green lemons fattening up and the tree is loaded with new buds and flowers.   I'm hoping to get a bunch more fruit next year, too. 

Last year we made these lovely puddings with the fruit.   Eric wants me to make them again this year....and we'll have enough lemons to do something else fun, too.

Adult Activities

It's harder than I thought to identify exactly what kind of grasshoppers these are.    There are a lot of grasshoppers out there.

Who knew?  

Turns out they are Differential Grasshoppers [Melanoplus differentialis].  You can tell because of the yellow legs and the black chevrons on the upper leg.   Very distinctive.

I thought these guys were engaged in a little adult activity, but it turns out they were multitasking.

They were eating my lemon tree.   

I chased them off and told them to go get a room. Geez.

Click the pics for a closer view of these lemon leaves.   They're pretty cool.