The Cycle of Life

As yall know from previous posts, our li'l row of citrus trees bless our family, friends, neighbors, and us with their bounty.  By far, the favorite fruit of our li'l citrus grove is the Satsuma oranges.  They are small, incredibly sweet, easy peeling and almost seedless, kinda like tangerines.  They are so popular we have 2 trees that produce them.  Sadly, one of them died.  The life expectancy of the trees ia 15-20 years.  They are such heavy producers they have a short life.  This li'l tree made it 10 years before dying; we aren't sure but we think since it is planted in a low spot it may have drowned in the heavy winter rains.

Well, I got up early, sharpened my ole shovel and went to work on the dead tree.  The first task was unearthing the bricks which were covered with grass and barely showing after sinking in the soil for over 10 years.

The next step was sawing all the branches off, turning the tree into a stump.  The green in the brush is some other tree that a squirrel planted next to the satsuma tree, most likely an oak.

Next, I clipped all the branches into sticks and got them into the wheelbarrow.  This makes the brush easy to manage, which will be demonstrated later.

Digging the stump up, cutting the roots with the shovel and getting it outa the hole was hot sweaty work but I took a couple water and fresh strawberry breaks and had it done by noon.

Well, call me a sentimental old fool, but the tree had given us such joy over the last 10 years and provided hundreds of pounds of delicous fruit that I couldn't just throw it away, so I created a funeral pyre for it in my old fire pit and gave it a rousing send off.

The fire burned on into the night and it smelled wonderful.  Later after a shower I slipped into bed and Peggy said, "OOOOHH you smell great; kinda smokey, old spicey, citrusy."  Alls I can say is, girl's got a nose on her.

I couldn't hardly end this post with a funeral, so allow me to introduce yall to the replacement Satsuma.  With the cycle complete and a young tree in place we look forwards to future fruity up-dates on this cycle of fruity life.