Monday morning Jose returned to trim back our unruly trees, cut a few down and do some general cleaning of our yard and the lot next door. I had him start with the two trees I wanted removed. Now before you get started being upset with me for taking out some trees look at it from our perspective. Our yard is about 30′ wide by 20′ deep – 600-700 square feet…there were 14 trees in that space. Several were quite pesky like the cherry tree, always dropping partially eaten fruit to the ground for ants and wasps to have a field day. Or the one sour mandarin tree which has the sourest fruit ever – not even sugar helps. I did keep the other mandarin in the corner that Joe wanted me to remove but just for shade and privacy. We finally put the fig tree in the ground, this one is for Yusuf. I really hated the idea of removing these trees but between the cleanup, the bugs, and the fact that you could not harvest enough fruit that weren’t already pecked up by the birds it was a waste of space having it in the yard.
Now there is air flow and sunlight between all the trees, the limons are not hanging over the driveway and whacking you in the head when you try to walk around. We feel this will allow the growth to be closer to the ground and easier for us to pick. Jose also cut the guava (guayaba) topping it off, again allowing for the growth to be lower and easier for us to harvest. This is also another tree that the birds just adore, and if we want to have any fruit at all we need to pick it early or else.
Then I had him go into the lot next door and clean up all the plastic bottles, bags and other junk hanging around there. He filled two huge garbage bags with what others had dumped over the wall from our yard.
Well it looks great.
Finding our Paradise in South America 