Flame-Red Meets Ruby-Red

I waited, waited almost a year from its conception to pick that second Ruby Red grapefruit. Its sister fruit fell off about a month ago and Phoebe wasn't here to share, but Bill and Liam got some, and it was amazing (as documented here in video)

But this second fruit hung on, through the fall and early winter with the giant heater with the bad thermostat that almost cooked all my plants to death. When I finally admitted that everything in the Groanhouse was dying as a result of my bad heater choice, I took my precious tree into the living room as a last resort.  I distributed all the other plants around the house and tower room. Here I stopped to fill a watering can and take it up to the gardenia and Rex begonia still enjoying its cool, well-lit confines.

When the tiny tree finally got to the relative safety of the house, it immediately dropped more than half its leaves. In relief or protest, I do not know. I figured I was looking at a done tree. But I kept watering it, and that great big fruit hung in there on its naked stick.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, I took the monster heater back to Menard's (my new favorite mega home/tool/outdoor store) and exchanged it for a 20K BTU blue flame heater that is juuuust right for the space. I re-installed my plants (all of which I'd brought indoors when I realized I'd lose them if I kept subjecting them to 30-degree temperature swings each time the heater kicked on). And watched and waited anxiously for signs of recovery.

It seemed only fitting that Phoebe's first act upon waking up in her own bed would be to proceed to the Groanhouse to pick the fruit she'd known since it was a fragrant white blossom. The theme of the year being sending her off to grow and thrive, after all.

So on this rarest of sunny mornings she did just that, with great ceremony, four attendants, and a gentle twist.

Nobody loves citrus like Phoebe and her mama. 

Homegrown in Ohio...you can imagine the excitement. Even though she's still half-asleep.

She likes to peel it, too.

Took the skin off all in one go. What she'll do with that particular skill I know not.

The feeding frenzy was too intense to get photos. We ate it section by section. Didn't want to waste a bit, even of the striffen. Unbelievably tender, quite sweet for a grapefruit. We didn't give the boys very much of it. They are not quite as enamored of sour things as we are. They don't go into the transports of ecstasy that are required when one eats Ohio-grown citrus. They do the Sour Dance, screwing up their faces and twirling around. Bah.

When we got into the sections, we found two seeds that had already sprouted roots inside the fruit! Well, you know what we had to do with those.

Back to the warm peaty soil they went.

The little tree was so thrilled to be installed in a safe, warm, sunny place, so thrilled to be freed of its burden (and of a good case of scale I found upon close examination) that it put out two ginormous leaves (second tier up from the fruit-in-training)

and a bunch of new green shoots from the naked half!!

IT LIVES TO BEAR ANOTHER PAIR!!

Rock on wit yo green self, Ruby Red. I promise to treat you better this round, little mama.

Ohio-grown Grapefruit: The Moment of Truth

The two grapefruit grew steadily all spring and summer long. Around the first of May, I moved the plant out to the front yard, where it lived on a pedestal with a bunch of friendly petunias and mallows, gerania and gardenia, cuphea and heliotrope. It never once blew off the pedestal--that's what a nice summer we had. Fall came and it got chilly and around the second week in October I moved it into the Groanhouse. Found the heater nonfunctional thanks to some kind of mason bees, having filled up the gas ports with clay. Went on a wild search for the perfect heater. Installed a monster that is now proving to be too much for the space and the plants. Groan.

 But that's another story. 

On the evening of November 13, I was doing a bedcheck and found the grapefruit tree sitting in a full saucer of water. Nobody likes to sleep with wet feet, so I tilted the pot to get the saucer out from under it. The left hand fruit fell from its pot support and leapt to the floor, where it bounced and rolled. Well! I guess you're ready to drop!

Note the two green understudies cheek to jowl with the lower yellow fruit. Obviously the bees got to its summer flowers, no pinkypollinator required. 

If these two greenies were conceived in June, we may be eating homegrown grapefruit again in April! I remain agog that such a paltry little plant could make two such delicious fruit. Talk about overachieving. I strive to keep it fed with time-release fertilizer, make sure it never goes dry, give it as much sun as possible, but still. It owes me nothing so extravagant.

I brought the noble fruit upstairs and kept it on the counter for a couple of days, in awe of this tiny shrublet's achievement. It was pungently fragrant, heavy with juice. I weighed it: 11 oz. Which is a very respectable weight for a small grapefruit. Heavier than the ones in the stores right now, and no smaller. 

Chet Baker wondered what the fuss was about when the time came for  Cutting the Grapefruit.

It was so beautiful. I couldn't bear to take a knife to it. But that's what it is for.

I steeled myself and sliced. Never was there a finer fleshed, juicier, more delicious Ohio Ruby Red grapefruit born. OK, it's not red. But we aren't in Florida, are we?

Bill made a little video. And me, still in my jammies. I just wish I could give each one of you a section.

Growing Grapefruit Under Glass

You will remember the Greenhouse Apocalypse of November 23, 2013. For those who don't, it was when the gasline between our well and the house froze up, and everything in my greenhouse froze solid. About 3/4 of my plants died outright. 

Ach, that post. I just glanced at it and quickly closed the window. Something best forgotten, that awful night.

I mourned for a long time. And then in the dark of December, on a gray woolen day, I drove to Scott's Greenhouse in Boaz, WV, and bought everything tropical that they had that might have a fragrant blossom. Everything half-price, everything must go. I bought some kind of sad-looking jasmines, passed on the giant pink hibiscus tree, and picked up and put down a teeny tiny Ruby Red grapefruit tree, not even a foot tall, about four times before I thought, "What the hell. It'll be covered in scale and I probably won't ever get fruit off it, but it'll smell nice when it blooms."

And the buds opened in the darkest winter days, and I was transported to sunny Florida, standing on the edge of an orange grove when I was about 12, seeing my first swallow-tailed kite circling overhead as I inhaled the fragrance of citrus. Worth the $8.00. Oh yes. 

It has never gotten scale, probably because of some systemic poison in the soil applied by the grower.  I repotted it, but the protection remained. Not going to wonder too much about that. Just glad it doesn't have scale. I can hear my poor orchids groaning. Once scale sets in, it's impossible to eradicate. Yes, darling orchids, I hear you, and a repot is coming. Just ordered a king's ransom of Aussie Gold potting medium. I'll wash you yet again, spray you down with Dr. Bronners peppermint soap and rubbing alcohol, give it another try.

The plant came with a big tag with care instructions, and what I thought was an overly ambitious reverse bearing two recipes for Ruby Red grapefruit. Right. Don't think I'll need your salsa recipes, but I like your optimism.

Flower after flower opened and then fell off without setting fruit. So one day I took my pinky to the stamens and twiddled them and lo and behold! the fruit stopped falling off. I had pollinated the flowers. It set a bunch of tiny green pea-sized fruit!

Here were the fruits on January 13, 2014.

In the wisdom of a small tree burdened with too many fruits,  the plant aborted all but two, one on each side. I thought that was wise of it, to distribute the weight symmetrically. For those would get heavy.


It bloomed a couple more times, but I didn't pollinate the flowers, not wanting to overburden the plant.

Such a delight in the darkest days of winter, to walk in and smell that.

Against the snow...

I delighted in watching the little fruits grow. (note Jasminum sambac, going nuts between my fingers!)

By March 7, 2014, we had two very nice fruits the size of jawbreakers, and the plant kept trying to make more! No, little tree, you have your arms full. Just concentrate on what you have. I'm not playing bee for you until you show me you can bring these to maturity.

Stay tuned...You know I don't start a story without having a nice ending in the wings.

How Goes the Greenhouse?

I promised I'd let you know how things go in the greenhouse, as it recovers ever so slowly from the devastation of the November 23, 2013 freeze. This photo's pretty symbolic. In the foreground, a budding Christmas cactus. I bought it in bloom in December, when I desperately needed flowers. It obligingly dropped them all, and all its buds. Oh, thank you. But then after sulking for a couple of months, it made  more buds, and these have carried through beautifully. Flowers.

 In the middle, a little rose-pink Abutilon I ordered from Logee's that makes me very happy. And in the rear, the huge vigorous leaves of a theater-curtain red geranium that was killed to the soil by the freeze, but somehow sent up a shoot. Yep, this photo says a lot about what's gone on in the greenhouse since the event I refer to as the Apocalypse.

Pulling back a bit, here they are in context. And there's the scarlet tanager-red stellar geranium that I was sure I'd lost to the freeze. It came back. The blue lobelias volunteered from seed, after the freeze, in the pot of what was once my huge tangerine orange hibiscus. Now represented by one shoot, on the right margin of this photo. But that shoot has some tiny buds on it.

Fireworks!! Color and life and beauty, once again. So hard-won, so longed-for.

The gardenia my sweet reader "Diana" sent, blooming in ones and twos, perfuming the whole place. We've been fighting red spider mite, and we're winning. The top bud opened today. Sooo intoxicating.

As is my dear Jasminum sambac, "Maid of Orleans," who lived through the freeze, sprouting from dead-looking sticks. Ahhhhhh. She's far better than before.

Chetty takes it all in, sniffing the perfumed air. He likes to help me clean the place, sweeping and scrubbing, and rearrange the plants.

I can't believe that this tiny Ruby Red grapefruit tree is doing what it's doing. Because it set too many (about a dozen), it aborted a handful of fruits,  but the four that stayed on are growing by leaps and bounds. Wow!! I imagine it laden with full-sized grapefruit and smile.  And it burst into bloom again, and made some new leaves! I think it likes me. It smells so sweet. I love this tree!

The big lumpy 25-year-old Mammilaria, perking along. I love this hardy old plant, too. 21 degrees ain't nothing to him. Been there, done that. The desert is a tough place. Your greenhouse is a walk in the park, freezes and all.

I was gone for 12 days and this marvelous flame-crested creature, here listening to a favorite tune from "Mulan" on her Macbook Air while she soaks up the sun, watered all my plants and twiddled the heater dials as conditions required. Not only that, but she enlisted sweet Liam to help her bring every last one of them inside before the temperatures dipped below zero again. "I was sick of worrying about what might happen if the gas went off or I couldn't keep them warm enough. So we brought them all inside." 

You can't buy or even wish for kids like that. You have to make them, raise them so they love all the same things you do. It's partly luck, partly magic, all miracle. We're blessed. 

The seedlings thrived under her care: tomatoes, tomatillos, cucamelons, peppers, and Swiss chard.

The tomatillos burst into bloom!! Well, who wouldn't, with Phoebe loving on you?

The greenhouse is back. And I feel each bud bursting into bloom inside me. The sun's heat races through my veins. 

Come on, Spring. Do it. 

Making It Through the Winter

That cold snap that blew in the night of January 5, that was a thing. The afternoon before, it was raining and almost 50 degrees, and I knew it was time to act. I was sure I couldn't heat the greenhouse adequately through temperatures in the teens, much less the negative single digits. So out it all came, carried in relays into the downstairs bathroom and my studio. Because I wound up losing about two-thirds of my plants in the big freeze of November 24, it wasn't all that much trouble. Well, nothing is too much trouble where me and the plants I love are concerned. I sometimes catch myself working like a draft horse to keep these plants alive and wonder why I bother. Yes, I felt pretty ridiculous evacuating the greenhouse, but what was my choice?

So there they are (about half of them) luxuriating in the bathroom while it's zero degrees and below outside. You can just see the back side of the greenhouse through the window. Good news is the gas line didn't freeze this time. Bad news is the heater I have isn't big enough to keep the greenhouse warm in those conditions. It's a work in progress, this new greenhouse, and Mr. Murphy and his cruel law keeps close watch over all proceedings. A new leak in the roof rained down on my hundred-dollar freeze alert unit that I was so proud of, which ruined it and put our phones out for a week until I figured out what had happened. Nice. Hi-tech is great, until a raindrop hits it.

I kept them inside for a week, until the coldest weather blew through, which made the bathroom a pretty nice place to be. That gave me a chance to clean out the greenhouse, throw out all the dead plants and take the soil from their pots for recycling. It was time to get rid of the Shelves of Death, lined with row upon row of pots studded with stems that I finally admitted were not going to send out shoots. I became expert at checking for life in root and stem. I didn't find much. What lived, lived, and a lot of what lived wound up dying anyway.

So here, I'm focusing on what I do have. 

"Grossersorten," a rangy single pink geranium, lost a few leaves but never batted an eye. It's blooming now.

Next to it, an amaryllis that was a Christmas present from Elsa and Laura.

It wasted no time getting big and beautiful in the unaccustomed confines of the greenhouse. Usually amaryllis have to do their thing on kitchen tables. Clearly, it's getting just what it needed.

Another grand survivor, my 24-year-old Mammilaria cactus. It seemed to take the freeze as a challenge to throw out bigger and more beautiful blooms.

I lost my old Wonderboom fig bonsai, but this new recruit is doing beautifully and I've become quite fond of it.

Lots of new healthy growth, and no scale as yet.

This gardenia is taking its own sweet time, tantalizing me, dropping buds here and there just before they open, then making more. Arrggggh.

But two have finally opened and there is no better scent. 

What a grand plant. I hope I can keep her in the manner to which she'd become accustomed.

Acid, acid, acid, that's the soil they love. This one is f-f-f-fusssssy.

The jasmine is going nuts. Not fussy, and perfuming its space as specified in its job description. 

The fresh green leaves are so much more beautiful than the ones they had before the freeze. Jasmines hate getting very cold, and their leaves go yellow. These leaves have never felt the sting of cold.

I didn't see this little pot of Bellis perennis, or English daisy, on the floor of the greenhouse when I evacuated, and it froze solid in the cold snap. Only days later its dark-green translucent leaves had come back to life, and it was throwing out flowers! I dug these plants on the lawn of the Fayetteville WV courthouse a year and a half ago. Bellis perennis is a longtime European invader that establishes itself in some lawns. I haven't quite been able to figure out why it does well in some places and not others. As far as I can see, it does no harm, and I find it very beautiful.  I've been trying to establish it in our lawn for years. These are the best plants I've had yet. The beat goes on.

The same thing happened to these Buttercrunch lettuces. Froze translucent, then bounced back.

The dwarf pomegranate continues to delight me. I downsized its pot from the gallon container it was in, and once it's established will downsize it again as I train it as a tropical bonsai. Its flowers are opening, throwing out crepey petals and stamens, and I hope it will choose to form fruit. Gotta get in there and pollinate them, probably...

Speaking of pollination, I noticed that my grapefruit's flowers were falling off without forming fruit. So I schnoodled around in them with my pinky and played bee.

It worked--I probably have a dozen fruits now on a "tree" that's not even a foot tall. Whoops. Brood reduction is in order. That's it in the left-hand blue pot, below. Imagine it with a dozen full-sized grapefruit. Where's that Tilapia in Grapefruit sauce recipe, anyway? I might need it in a year or so.

Yep, things are happening in the greenhouse. It's got an aura of life again. I like going in. I find myself singing, "Hello Ladies!" when I do. I haven't yet taken to spending evenings down there. I still have a little PTSD about that, I think. Make that a lot.

I was most thrilled to see the first bud open on one of my stellar Graffiti geraniums that lived through the freeze. I was absolutely sure I'd lost the red one. I figured the pink one, which I wasn't all that crazy about, was the one that made it.  I got that plant on May 1, 2006, and I sure hated to lose it. I had a tiny cutting that I thought was the red one, and a big plant that somehow survived which I was sure was the pink. The tiny cutting died yesterday without rooting. And the same day, the big plant opened its flower.

When the bud opened, it was just the color of a scarlet tanager. I can't even describe how happy I was to know it had survived. It's such a good red, a brilliant, clear, happy, firepink red.

I always plant it out in a pot next to the Bird Spa, hoping to one day see this again. 

It happened June 22, 2009.

 It could happen again.

That's become a mantra this winter. It happened once. It could happen again. I won't say the mantra has gotten me through. Mantras may work for some people, but I need living things. The plants that lived through it all and came back, the new plants who've come to live and flourish here, my family (which includes Chet) and friends and love and running and the very occasional sunny day and that little church on the hilltop, that's what's gotten me through.