Red Lilies and Growing Oranges

A while back, my mother gave us some really large lily bulbs. We had them planted in a pot up in Connecticut and right before moving, Laura suggested we remove the bulbs from the pot and bring them with us. I agreed and we did this with these bulbs, our clusters of lily of the valley and her avocado trees. Yes, for years, she’s been growing each and every avocado pit from each and every avocado we’ve eaten. You should see how they grow. They’re huge.

Anyway, a few days after we got here, I ran out to Lowe’s and bought two large planters and some potting soil. Our transport of the plants was bare root, so they really needed to get into the ground.

I wondered if the plants would take. I planted the lily of the valley and the red lilies in the planters and the avocado trees in the side yard and waited a few days. While the avocado trees really need to be run down by the lawnmower, the lilies and lily of the valley are perking up like it’s nobody’s business. I’ll show you a picture of the lilies here.

The lily of the valley will take some time before they’re photo worthy, but they’re getting there.

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I checked my orange trees this morning. I like to do this every day or two because, to be honest, I’m still marveling at the idea of growing oranges. Never in my life did I think I would be nurturing an orange tree.

They’re doing well. The small one I just planted is growing like nuts. I have one or two oranges that are getting larger and actually turning color and about a million that are still tiny and green. I’m not sure what’s going to happen when the green ones get plump (if they ever do), but it should be interesting to watch. I’m assuming the branches would just lay on the ground because of the weight.

My large tree’s fruit is growing leaps and bounds. The funny thing is though, none of the “oranges” are turning orange. How can I have one orange tree that has little baby oranges that are turning orange, but the other tree, with so called oranges that are ten times the size, still green? I’m beginning to thing that it may be a grapefruit tree. I have to check into this to see if grapefruit trees have the same leaves as orange trees. We’re going to Lowe’s tonight, so I’ll do some digging around.

UPDATE: I’ve been informed that the red lily bulbs are in fact amaryllis.