My elderly neighbor had amazing mandarin and grapefruit trees in her yard when I was young. I have a distinct memory of being up on her roof on a particularly cold and windy day, harvesting the mandarins, trying not to get poked by the massive 6-8cm spikes along the branches while we combed through each part of the tree. She was grateful to have our help and I really enjoyed time spent around her. Great memory that I didn’t think about until your post, so thank you!

Oh, thank you for this! Any excuse to enjoy one more weekend preparing/resting rather than doing the hard labor. Especially if it means I’m helping out our friends!

I’m still trying to determine what kind of fruit trees are growing in the yard. Getting closer to identifying them as the days pass! Getting more confident about the plum and apple guesses.

It’s been fun to see the grapevines waking up; I made a few wreaths with the trimmed vines last week. I’ll keep picking at the mint that I found lounging around the stairs so it doesn’t get too out of hand.

Cut down some invasives and trimmed up the trees a few weeks ago and everything is filling out nicely. Once the leaves and branches are fully raked and removed, I’ll be able to see what’s up for the rest. It looks like most of the pollinators are awake and about now that it’s warm enough so I feel better about tidying up the leaves to send to the city compost.

I pressed some of the freshly fallen PJM rhododendron flowers between parchment paper and set them under some weight. Looking forward to seeing what they look like in a few weeks.

No Mow May is in full swing - dandelions abound!

I’m discovering hyacinth (and gardening for that matter) for the first time this year! Yours has an incredible color! I’m on mobile using the Jerboa app so I’m not sure if the pic i added uploaded. We’ll see! Also our PJM Rhodie is in bloom.

We’re still trying to figure out what kind of fruit trees we have in the backyard but I’m assuming plum, and maybe apple or pear.