Orange Lemons - or Lemon Oranges?

Growing up, as I did, in Ohio, I never dreamed I'd have the luxury of owning citrus trees. But here they are popular and pretty easy to grow! Excited about the prospect of having lemons, limes and so on, we planted a number of trees on the slope below our house. Some of the area is a bit shaded, but friends and neighbors in the area assure us that you can still get fruit as long as the tree gets some sun. So we planted a grapefruit, a couple of varieties of orange, a mandarin orange, and a lemon tree.

The orange trees were quickly devoured by the wallabies, and the grapefruit was pretty well stripped down, although it did survive (it never fruited, however, possibly because it had a tad too much shade). The mandarin is going strong, but has been without any fruit at all. The lemon - a Meyer lemon tree was following the example of the mandarin until last year. Then suddenly it got fruit!

Well - last summer wasn't the easiest one for us here (hot, dry, lots of scary fire weather days) and because I don't frequently go down to where the lemon tree is, well, I just forgot about it. But I remembered it this spring and went down to have a look.

Wow - was it ever loaded with fruit! Most of the lemons (many of which are still ripening) are quite small - but there were a handful that were larger than I expect lemons to be... and they were ORANGE!

Here's a photo of one of two pieces of fruit picked on the same day from the same tree:

What's up with that?!?!?

A little web-based research got me the answer.

Meyer lemon trees, it seems, are orange tree trunks with lemon branches grafted on. Well, whaddya know? And if you leave the fruit on too long, it turns orange and the flavour changes, too. I sliced open one of the orange ones (below) to see what it looked like, and sure enough - about halfway between the colour of a lemon and an orange:

I tasted it - and yup, orangy lemon. I'm not sure about the taste - but maybe I'll develop a fondness for it.

Pictures from the book: Page 32

Buster was always photogenic - what a sweet face! How adorable! And how unwelcome he made himself and his sulphur-crested pals.

It used to just amaze me that the wild birds would be so very bold - they come right up to the windows and doors, tap on the glass for attention. I'm convinced that if we didn't keep a close eye on the doors (making sure they are CLOSED at all times), these birds would have been happy to stroll right into the house. (UGH!)

These days it's rare for us to have a visit from a cockatoo. We make a special effort to chase them off, and since one of us is home nearly all the time, there's always someone on guard. And, of course, Laka does her bit; if a cockatoo shows up, she has a screaming meltdown.

Maggie, Billy Bob and "Junior"

I hadn't really thought about it much, but we haven't seen Maggie and Billy Bob here together for a while. Seperately, yes, but not together - and mostly it's been Billy Bob. The reason? Ah... breeding season. Yes, our magpies have a youngster - "Junior".

Junior is out of the nest now and able to fly quite well. He's sticking pretty close to his mum, loudly whining and begging for food. Here she is feeding him:

There's a certain behaviour I've seen them engaging in - it's really strange. Junior gets over next to his mum and then rolls over onto his back, wiggling his feet in the air and calling out. I finally got a couple of photos of this.  They're not the best quality (I was shooting from quite a distance) but you can see in this one (below) Maggie standing over Junior, who is on his back (the white you see is the underside of his tail).

(Doubleclick these photos to see larger images)

In this next photo (below), Maggie seems to be pecking and prodding at Junior. I'm not sure if she's trying to get him up, or if she's going after some kind of parasite (possibly a leech)?

Here she is standing over him, and rolling him onto his side (he wasn't cooperating, just flopped there like a sack, with her tugging at him).

Finally he's rolling back onto his feet, with Maggie apparently grabbing at his legs from the right hand side.

What are they actually doing? Your guess is as good as mine.

I've seen both parents nudging and pecking at Junior - sometimes one or the other, sometimes together. Maybe they are removing parasites, but it actually looks more like Junior is throwing some kind of temper-tantrum and they're just trying to get him to stop it.

Happy Birthday Vegemite!

Driving home this afternoon I heard on the radio that today is the 90th birthday of Vegemite! Hey! Let's celebrate!

Hm... how do you celebrate such an auspicious occasion? Birthday candles? Champers?  I'll have to give this serious thought.

When I got home, I jumped online to verify the occasion, and came across a radio interview Jamie Callister - grandson of the inventor of this fabulous food, and author of "The Man Who Invented Vegemite".  Here's a link to the webcast of the interview.  Hope you have a listen - and hope you have a jar of Vegemite handy.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VEGEMITE!!!