It's The Most Wonderful Time of The Year

(Owari) Satsuma Mandarin

We've had rain!  Holy cow.  It finally happened.  Wonderfully cool, wet weather has arrived.  The garden has been washed with rain that ran from a soft misty drizzle to a downpour.  It has been great. With that cool weather comes a variety of citrus and I love them all. 

First up are the mandarins.  These have been successfully marketed recently by local Paramount Farms as Little Cuties. They sold the rights to that name to Sun World and now market the name Halos. Fine, I'll grow my own whenever I can. The seedless mandarin fruit is easy to peel and taste like winter time in Bakersfield.  I have always enjoyed citrus.  As a kid, my parents would take us to the citrus orchards for fruit tasting.  Delicious.

In the garden is just one potted mandarin tree that is about 3 years old.  There are over 4 dozen mandarins loaded on the skinny little branches. The fruit stays on the trees until it's needed which is a nice feature. The potted lemons are abundant too. Tomorrow night's dinner is fried Lemon Chicken! The oranges are about the size of grapefruit.  Grapefruit is my absolute favorite.  There are a load of grapefruits to enjoy for many breakfasts this winter.  Limes are next on my list to bring into the garden once the threat of frost and freeze has past.

Garden in the Kitchen

 The hope was to keep the soapstone natural or naked.  I like the cadet blue-grey.  However, a kitchen accident splashing chicken fat all over the stone was the straw that broke this camel's back.  The stone was cleaned, dried, then wax was applied.  The wax makes the surface a little more forgiving to everyday wear.  I like the way it turned out so giving up the naked stone wasn't so hard.  Now I need to  decorate the walls.

Soapstone - naked

Soapstone - waxed

A photograph applied to canvas is something that I'm considering.  An extra large canvas (48" x 36") should work great on one of the empty walls (not shown here).  So I'm thinking of bringing some of the garden into the kitchen and don't know which version of my tomato looks best.

Tomato - bright

Tomato - dark

But 1st I need to find a reliable source to print the photograph to canvas.  Any suggestions or opinions are welcome.