Lessons from my Garden

            When I was young I had an Tangelo tree in my backyard.  Every year I would get really excited watching the small white blossoms change into tiny round balls.  As a child I would run outside to see the color change as the Tangelos became juicy and ripe. 

                                Tangelo Tree
   Our tree had a reputation of being harsh on the taste buds.  The tree produced a fruit that was even more bitter than a lemon.  My Tangelo tree at first sight looked just like the Orange tree in my grandma's back yard, I recall becoming very angry when the fruit never tasted the same.  My grandmother's tree produced bags and bags of sweet fruit.   I often ate oranges from my grandmother's bounty until my belly was bursting.  I could never understand why our Tangelo tree looked just like an orange tree, smelled just like an orange tree and grew just like an orange tree, but the fruit was terrible.

Orange tree

                   When I was  9 years old my dad decided to help me try to encourage the fruit to taste better on our Tangelo tree.  We decided to give more time to the tree, water it and fertilize it.  I had high hopes that we would be able to use it's harvest this year.  That year I committed to water the tree every week.  

  My dad found some fertilizer to feed the tree.  After waiting and hoping for an entire year I remember being absolutely certain that the Tangelo fruit would taste like an orange.  Oh, what a huge disappointment in my young life when the Tangelo fruit was bitter.    All that hard work and the Tangelos tasted exactly the same as they had the year before!!  Suddenly I realized that we would never get sweet fruit from this sour tree.  This perhaps this is why they don't sell Tangelos in the grocery store. 

  The lesson from my garden that year was a good one,

        "You can't change Tangelos into

      Oranges no matter now hard you try."                 

             
  There is a another lesson that can be gleaned from my Summer with the Tangelo tree.  The saying that a good tree produces good fruit has always rang true to me.  It is possible to know a tree by it's fruits.  This statement sounds so simple, but as I reflect back on my life it has proved accurate many times.  In the story of the Tangelo tree, I knew it was bad fruit, but I wouldn't believe it until I did everything I could to make it better and failed. 

    
  Now I am older and when I decide what trees to nurture and cultivate in my life I look first at the type of fruit they produce.   Looking at the quality and sweetness of the fruit a tree produces before I plant it in my garden has saved me disappointment, frustration and a lot of water.