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When we lost our elder cat last year, we planted a tree that goes by many names to honor his memory.

My brother’s family adopted a kitty from the same litter as we did and they named her Kiri. We followed suit calling ours a name that means “Tangerine” in Japanese. Mikan was a deeply-vibrant shade of orange and Stacy and I are both long-time Led Zeppelin fans, so the name was pretty fitting.

We bought the tree from spectacular local nursery / landscape designer, Earth Works, and it has done really well where we planted it.

Stacy mentioned yesterday that she saw some small tangerines on the tree. I’ve read that you are supposed to trim the fruit for the first few years so the roots can take and the plant can spend its energy developing a strong canopy, so I dutifully went out to trim them. I was truly surprised to see how many fruits there were!

Hopefully, it’ll be “big enough” next year to convince me to leave a few to ripen! If this was any indication, there should be a lot of them.

It’s not a complete loss, though, as I discovered that the tiny citrus makes a nice, zesty garnish for sparkling water 😻