Saturday 20 October 2018

Lemon Trees oh so Pretty

Time to prune the lemon trees.  We had an abundant crop this year and the freezer is full of frozen lemon cubes, bottles of lemonade concentrate and others with plain fresh squeezed lemon juice.  The trees now have a good crop of green lemons.  Our pruner says that many must be sacrificed for the good of future crops.





Friend, cafeteria owner, fisherman, oil producer, gardener and lemon-tree-pruner giving our trees a haircut.
The lemons that are on the branches being removed are hard and green but I'm collecting those as well.  Hopefully they will provide a little fresh juice till the others ripen properly



After all that hard work it was time for an ouzo
Vaso had been working over the road and popped in for a chat
She 'put them all to bed' three hours later


The branches were left for me to haul out of the garden.  I'm piling them up across the road .  They will be burnt in a few weeks when hopefully they've dried out a bit and don't need too much petrol to keep the fire raging.  The summer fire restriction has been lifted now but we are not setting light to these until it has rained again and surrounding grasses are no longer dry as tinder

15 comments:

  1. How lovely to have a lemon tree and share a glass of ouzo.

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    1. We have two lemon trees, an absolute necessity for greek cuisine

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  2. mmm Ouzo. Haven't had that in years. As for lemons, we have a tree here - can't wait till it fruits again.

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    1. NZ has wonderful citrus. We always had a lemon tree in our garden. My parents loved their tangelos which I have never seen here

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  3. Our mandarin and lemon trees have just about finished flowering. They need pruning and we had great intentions of doing them over winter but hey it is now spring and we didn't get around to it. They will now have to wait till next winter. Yours looks good.

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    1. The trees have had their tops cut so it will be easier to get to all of the lemons. Those branches have sharp thorns though and carrying them out to the road was not an easy task

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  4. Fresh lemons...how wonderful !
    I can think of many uses, they make wonderful cleaning products too.
    Hugs,
    ~Jo

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    1. Greeks use them to clean the oil off their hands. Not my favourite way of washing my hands. Yes, they have many other uses

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  5. After some recent rain, I lit my huge bonfire. It burnt beautifully, and quickly. Quite frightening. People here do grow Lemons, but they are in huge tubs on wheels, and have to be taken indoors for Winter. Not quite the same.

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    1. Even small fires can crackle quite fiercely . You need to be wary even in winter. Our trees seem to do well in the winter cold but of course our cold is not quite your cold!

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  6. It is so exotic to think of having a lemon tree! How do you make the concentrate that you freeze? -Jenn

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    1. The concentrate is one cup sugar, one cup water and one and a half cups of juice simmered gently till the sugar has dissolved. Then you fill a third of a glass with concentrate and top up with water and ice. Very refreshing and very easy to make.

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  7. Ahhhh, that old song.... (Your post title) :-)

    More good healthy work done. And Vaso is certainly proof, that good work, can lead to long life.

    ✨🍁🎃🍁✨👻✨🍁🎃🍁✨

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    1. Good old Vaso. She is slowing down but she just goes on like a duracell battery!

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