Orange Blossoms

I love the smell of orange blossoms. Preferably the real thing. Yes, there are some nice essential oils that capture the fragrance pretty well, but there's nothing quite like sticking your face into a blossom-covered citrus tree and inhaling the "natural" perfume! (It IS the state flower of Florida, after all!) We have three citrus trees in our yard. One tangerine, one grapefruit, and one orange. All produce really nice, tasty fruit in the late fall/early winter. So for a few weeks in the spring, like now, they are covered in the little white blossoms and that fantastic smell wafts around the yard on every puff of breeze. Heavenly!

Last weekend I noticed that the tangerine tree was white. I'm talking white, like it had been sprinkled with snow. The orange and grapefruit trees are pretty "puffed up", too, but that tangerine tree has simply gone crazy this year! (That's a good thing--out of all the fruits we have, I like our tangerines the best!) Yesterday afternoon I went over and looked at it closer. Many of the blossoms' petals have already fallen off, and in their place are tiny little green dots--those are the baby tangerines, and there are a LOT of them!

I stroked a couple of the tiny tangerines, stuck my face into a cluster of the remaining flowers and inhaled a few times, and just smiled. Tangerine party at my house in November! Everyone's invited--we're going to have plenty!

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