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I love citrus. I crave it sometimes. Crave is not a word that comes up for me in connection with fruit. I love fruit and I eat it pretty regularly, but I'm never like, oh, man, an apple right now would really make my day. Citrus on the other hand, that can really brighten my day. I get this feeling more in winter, which makes sense as I look out the window at snow still on the ground with a cold foggy mist hanging above it. An orange or a lemon brings me back to brighter, warmer days. The colors! How do you not smile at a sunny orange or bright lemon? The juice! It's so dry right now, any extra fluid inside helps. The zing! Don't we all need a little extra vitamin C to help us through winter to keep that scurvy away? I'm reading some Jack London stories now, and scurvy does not sound like fun. Symptoms include rough dry skin, joint and body aches, fatigue, depression, increased susceptibility to infection, muscle weakness. Sounds like winter to me! London's stories are extreme. I love winter, but I have my limits and sub-zero temperatures with barely a glimpse of light is nowhere close to the winter I love. An orange would have really brightened their dark days, if it didn't freeze solid!  Citrus grows in tropical and subtropical locations. It's native to the southern slopes of the Himalayas, China and Southeast Asia. Early varieties were introduced to the Mediterranean along with so many other exotic foods in the 1st millennium BCE and they were a good match. Citrus doesn't like temperatures below 20. Who does? If you're feeling cold and over the winter, try dreaming about citrus, or enjoying a dreamy bite of an orange. Let it take you to those warmer places, if even for just a minute. Eat it. Savor it. Take a moment as you close your eyes and imagine the warm sun as you smell the orange that just squirted in your eye while you were peeling it. Picture the evergreen tree with glowing orbs of orange yellow or green on a hillside. Put yourself on that hillside in Southern California, Florida, Spain or Italy. Feel better? We have a citrus that will over winter here in NJ. It's called trifoliate orange. You don't really want to eat it, but it's good for cooking or making something else, including medicine. It's rather bitter. Maybe you can relate if all your relatives are in warm places and you've decided to stay in the cold.  Our lemon tree in Oceanside after the fence fell on it during a storm. My love of citrus plants started in San Diego. That's where it all started, where Paul and I met. But I already wrote that story. Now, we grow citrus in pots. We do not exactly have room for this luxury. Who's using the guestroom in New Jersey in January anyways? To us, it's well worth the sacrifice of space. And by sacrifice, I include twice yearly blood offerings as we transport these dagger filled trees in and out of our little house. Scratches on my forehead, stabs to my fingers, snags on my arm skin. It's worth it to help these trees. They definitely wouldn't have survived this insanely cold winter. They aren't too thrilled about being cooped up inside either, but we try our best and at least they're not frozen and they get supplemental light. I can leave our citrus out until November, usually, but they get cranky about the short days and tend to copy the other deciduous trees around us, turning a little yellow and dropping leaves. This makes me wonder if they are a true evergreen, or only so in locations where the day light stays closer to 12 hours a day. Or at least above 10. An overlooked benefit of being in a tropical area is the daylight doesn't change so drastically. If you travel to or grow citrus in Spain, France or Portugal let me know how your trees behave.  When we bring the trees in in October, they're stoked. They love the warmth and the light. By December, they are filled with so many flowers that fill the house with fragrance. It's intoxicating sometimes getting to the point of sickening. They don't last long. And if it's too much, they make a delicious cordial or syrup. I made a cordial with the blossoms and pomegranate one year. So good. I used to tickle all the flowers to help pollination. Then I got lazy and still got fruit. It's great to do a job for years only to realize you don't need to and you're actually not a necessary part of the process. It turns out that citrus don't need pollination to initiate fruit production. Most of the seeds are the result of asexual reproduction, apomixis. Unlike many other fruits, you know what you'll get. A lemon will produce lemons and if you plant the seeds, you'll get another lemon tree. Probably. God knows what you'll get if you plant an apple seed. But if you want to create a new type of citrus or make it more adapted to your environment good luck finding that one seed that was fertilized!  Fruit growing indoors, and some grumpy leaves. As I write this, our 3 varieties of cities are living in our guest room. And as I mentioned, they are kinda picky. They're drought tolerant and ok with some dry spells. Pots are always a challenge when it comes to water. We found that watering once a week until the water comes out into the tray underneath the pot is perfect. I procrastinated and went 2 weeks last month. When we finally watered, they dropped hundreds of leaves and some fruit in a dramatic show of disapproval. They'll get over it. The stress of being inside also opens them up to predators like spider mites and scale. Keeping a fan in the room and a bit of humidity seems to help. Usually they get to March or so when they've finally just had it. And so have I. By January, there's all sorts of tiny green fruits along with all the fruits that are ripe or close to ripe from the last flowering. They're kind of perpetual flower-ers. Fruit takes forever to ripen. By forever, I mean six to sixteen months. The heaviest flowering seems to happen for us in December and then again in July or August. I think it's triggered by the increase in temperature that comes in summer and then our artificial heat in our house. In their more native environment, they'd flower heavily in spring and then put out a few other flowers throughout the year. The fruit seems to ripen better with cooler temps. I remember trees in San Diego just always having Fruit. Or like my parents' tree, never having fruit. I blamed the dog for eating all the bees and other buzzing friends. After revisiting my old subtropical fruit production notes, I realize this isn't the problem. The dog is still crazy, and so is my dad. He had a years long battle with the birds and possibly rats eating all the fruit. Not many animals seem to like citrus, but the birds will pluck the little fruits off, maybe for fun. He tried nets and the birds just went under it. He tried shiny things and noisy things. He even drew a giant eyeball on a piece of plastic poster board one year. He posted it on a long pole. It had veins and all to make it look angry. That worked for about a day. Eyes are scary, but birds learn pretty quick. I think he gave up after that. Luckily for us, my sister has an abundance of citrus; lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, kumquats. When I visit, I carry an extra bag to fill up and carry home. TSA agents roll their eyes and I smile, knowing I just brought a little California sun home to New Jersey.
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Squirrely started it. Or was it Pattze? Another chicken or the egg situation of taking two to tango. It doesn't matter much to point a finger; this story is about the bluejays anyways. Pattze was leaving nuts and other snacks out for these critters. Jay saw Squirrely getting snacks and wanted in on the action. He joined the peanut party and his partner Blue soon followed. It didn't take long for these backyard neighbors to think of me as another part of the yard, like a fixture. They'd probably been watching me doing yoga and exercising on the back porch for years and I never noticed. I like to think that doing something like yoga, slow, calm, meditative made me seem all the more friendly and inviting. So do peanuts. Trust is built through shared food. What they likely saw was that I had a stash of peanuts in my pocket or on my mat, and they saw how the game was played. We often think we're not a part of nature. These animals are watching our every move, and they are everywhere. If we don't stop to pay attention, we can miss them. If we do slow down a bit, we can start a conversation with those around us. Sit still, observe, tend to the plants and be loving with your pets, drink your drink out there, read a book, draw or color, have dinner, be calm. And carry some treats!  At first, I would bring a few peanuts out with me in my pocket or on my mat. Squirrely got closer and closer over time, until she began reaching right into my pocket. Jay quickly took notice and followed suit. He's a little more cautious maybe skeptical, but quite vocal and demanding. Boundary lines are so interesting, invisible yet meaningful. Variable. Moveable. Over time, shrinking. Ten feet. Five feet. Two feet. Inches from my extended hand. This was a difficult step, and I needed to look the other direction. Eye contact is threatening and birds are prey animals, which tend to have eyes on the side of their heads. One eye finds food while the other keeps a lookout, like birds, horses, fish and squirrels. Predators have eyes at the front of their face to better focus in on the prey, like humans, bears, wolves, foxes, owls and hawks. When approaching a prey animal, it sometimes helps to go at them with a side eye. This is hard to do. I feel like that gopher from the old memes. It makes them feel more comfortable. Using this trick, I was able to get Jay to grab the peanut from my open palm. I have better luck when I just completely look the other way. Pro tip: don't look away with squirrels. They might take your finger instead! Better tip: There are no pros, just idiots like me. Don't hand feed wild animals. You will get scratched and bit.  This idea of becoming closer to the neighbors started when I went to Santa Barbara. I took a walk with my nephew, and we ran into a woman who fed her neighbor scrub jays by hand. She simply held up a peanut and the jay swooped down and grabbed it. I was so excited, we run home to tell everyone. Immediately my mom went outside and began throwing salted peanuts at some jay in the yard. That went nowhere quick, as did the tiny peanut thrown by an old cocktailing woman. It was quite hilarious though!  I haven't kept up with the hand feeding due to jays nesting, winter, and aggressive tweaker-like squirrels who also learned the game, chasing me and jumping at my door like we were in a horror movie. Trust waned slightly (for all of us), but the familiarity is still there. I always know when Jay is near, I did mention he was vocal. He screams '"Jay, Jay, Jay", announcing his presence and calling me to run out with nuts. He never comes to the other windows to find me like my other neighbors do. His voice, my attentive ear and desire to please is all he needs. His partner Blue is a lot quieter. I honestly don't know who the male or female is, their feathers look so similar. My eyes are not trained on the details yet. I'm working on that through photos and sketching. It's a slow learning process. For now, I go off of behavior and decided the louder, more aggressive and sure bird is the male, Jay. The more quiet and reserved bird is the female, Blue. This year, Blue had some feathers on her shoulder come in funny after her late summer molt, so I have a little cheat for now. Blue sits patiently, a little more distant, a lot less demanding. She murmurs a quiet song but still gets plenty of peanuts. I try to make it fair, and they aren't incredibly greedy or quick to eat them. Sometimes they fly off with the one and hiding it away somewhere for later.  I watched as one did this once. I said to myself out loud, "Well, that was a shitty job of hiding a nut", only to walk directly over there and not be able to find it myself. They're tricksters and quite cunning. They might pretend to hide it if someone else is watching, but it could've also been like when I'd watch the dog poop, go in to get a bag or shovel, and then spend five minutes searching the area. Their memory and spatial awareness are very good, unlike mine. Like the squirrels, they can remember where they hid their nuts and find them later, when food is scarcer. And we think humans are the only animals with the skill of foresight and have these wonderfully advanced brains.  Blue Jays have often been labeled as bullies. After watching them, I might disagree. Sure, their large size and demeanor make them intimidating. Their smarts and loud voices can make them seem dominant and they are coercive with their mimicry of other birds. Ok, sure, that's most of the definition of bullying. But are they seeking to cause harm? I have yet to see a blue jay cause harm. With my eyes. Rumor has it they eat other birds' eggs. Ok, maybe they're bullies. I've seen grackles fly off with a bird in their mouth while all the sparrows squawked and the house finches stared in disbelief, but they aren't related. Blue jays are more closely related to crows, ravens and magpies than they are to grackles. All very smart birds and quite tricky. Maybe they hide the evil side from me. Innocent til proven guilty?  Molting Bluejay getting some much needed protein to help grow new feathers. This winter Blue and Jay invited a new pair of jays over. These two don't have names yet. They also haven't quite grasped how the dance works. I always knew there were more in the neighborhood, but it's so hard to tell. They come and go so quickly and get lost in the tree line and go past my view. About a month ago I heard Jay explaining the deal. They were hesitant but got a few nuts. They've started venturing over by themselves occasionally. Today they came by with Blue. One was noisy. Neither one knows to follow my hand, look at me, or the peanut. I threw a few out and they didn't follow; kind of like our old dog Barley, who never learned to play catch. This time I didn't throw a nut at their faces and have it bounce of their foreheads! Maybe they'll catch on in time. So will I. I'll keep observing them and learning more each day. They will too.
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AuthorWe're nature lovers. We grow mushrooms, veggies, fruits and herbs on our 1/10th of an acre plot 4 blocks from the beach in NJ. We have chickens. We forage and birdwatch. These are our adventures in our backyard and beyond. Archives
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