Raising Watsons

We recently moved the little guy to a nice place: more room for family to come visit, BIG back yard, two houses down from the largest park around.  The park has: a pond with ducks & geese, toddler playgrounds, outdoor gym, free sunday concerts … it’s just a nice place to be.  Plus we’re on a quiet street with very little through traffic.  When we moved into the place we knew there was a fruit tree in the back, but we didn’t realize that we had so many!

Witness the bounty of our backyard!

We have an unimpressive crabapple tree …

There is also an apricot tree.

Everything’s still a bit green on this, so we’ll have to wait a while to see what the fruit is really like.

Massive Black Walnut tree.

This bad boy is about 50′ tall and will cannonball your ass with half-pound walnuts all day!

I’ve heard some of these walnuts whumping into the ground at quite a speed!  So far no one has gotten beaned in the head, but it’s just a matter of time.

PS: These walnuts are completely inedible as far as I know, so it’s all for not.

Our Little Fig Tree

Judging how much fiber is in each one of these little fruits, I’m not sure how many of these we’ll actually be eating.  I used to love Raisin Nut Bran when I was a kid, and there were little date pieces mixed in with the nut-covered raisins and flakes.  My bowl would be licked clean except for the pile of fig bits at the bottom.  Fig Newtons? Nope, Apple Newtons were made just for me.  There is something magical about figs preserves and cheese, or fig preserves mixed with cocoa.  MMM-mmm.

The Pride of the backyard … the Orange Tree

We’ve heard that they are in fact sour oranges, but we’ll have to wait until our first harvest in a month or two.

I sure hope that they are sweetish, because there are a TON of them on the tree.

This is one tiny two square foot section around the bottom of the tree.