Calamondin

I have not tended to my blog in nearly a year. What have I been doing instead? Have you been to the produce section lately? Witness the piles of oranges and clementines that have replaced the seasonal fruit bins; it has been a busy season for us citrus farmers.



Sunkist may be proud of its bazillions of orange groves, but I have chosen instead to concentrate my love and labor into a single indoor tree, which Ginna had left in my care before moving to Costa Rica and which I have since semi-verified as a calamondin tree. In the past year and a half, it has produced exactly three calamondins, one of which looked ripe enough for harvest this morning.



I expected the fruit to fall off the branch at the slightest caress, but the damn thing did not yield without a fight, during which it suffered a veritable scalping at my brutish fingers.



Wonder of wonders: the fruit, which measured maybe an inch and a half in diameter, was a perfectly formed specimen of the ideal citrus. Underneath the thin but hardy skin, there were six perfect little sections of calamondin.





Naturally I separated a section and put it in my mouth. It was a tiny grenade of tart; I was overwhelmed by the thing and had to spit it out immediately. There was no sweetness to it at all. A later Wikipedia investigation revealed that the calamondin is extraordinarily sour and that only its peel carries any sweetness.

I am thinking of adding an orange tree to the farm.