I have a tree in my patio. A big grapefruit tree. I’m delighted to have a big grapefruit tree in my patio for the shade it provides to the morning side of the house. It gives me a place to hang my wind chimes and hummingbird feeders. It will look great with twinkly lights strung through it’s branches.
But it has it’s hazards as well.
The night after I got the keys to the new place with the grapefruit tree in the patio we had a major windstorm. Trees down in the roads, roofs blown off, billboards sailing off to parts unknown. The whole area was a mess.
The first thing I did in the morning was to drive over and survey the place. Roof looked good. Tree still standing, no obvious broken branches. No debris sticking through the walls or garage door.
Then I walked into the patio.
It was covered with fallen grapefruit.
This is not the time of year that I favor doing much work outside. That morning the temperature was almost 90 degrees and the humidity…yikes! It is Monsoon after all. Sweating is not something I enjoy so I was not thinking happy thoughts about the tree and it’s fallen bounty.
By actual count I picked up and threw out 75 grapefruit that morning.
The good thing is the tree has been pretty much stripped of fruit. This is something that should be done annually to keep the rats at bay and reduce the potential for getting beaned by dropping grapefruit. The previous owner didn’t take care of that this year. Mother Nature took care of it for me.
Well, she took care of part of it. It would have been nice if she’d picked up all the fruit and disposed of it for me too. Is that expecting too much?