orange you glad i have a tangerine tree?

We're having a bit of a cold snap here in sunny Florida. Our winter usually spans a day or two, and involves waking up one morning, sliding the thermostat control from cool to heat, complaining about our sinuses for a while, then sliding that control back to cool where it belongs. It's often warmer outside the house anyway, especially if we can find a sunny spot. With this in mind (and because I have a presentation in the works for Wednesday and I'm procrastinating, naturally), I ventured outside - braving the unseasonable cold that brings my northern neighbors to their knees with (sympathetic) laughter - to warm up.

It did the trick, probably because after wandering through the tangle of knee-high death that is our lawn seeking out still-living things, like the one tenacious rose that dared bloom yesterday, I noticed our tangerine tree was loaded with ripe fruit so I climbed the ladder and got to picking. We did this once after Thanksgiving when my sisters were here, and ended up with a freezer full of tangerine and kumquat juice. Nothing's left of that bunch but one bottle of the kumquat variety that Ian will use for pies.

Not much else to say about these tangerines - they're not certified organic, I didn't measure their output or compare our harvest to last year's. Just squoze some damned tangerines and it felt good, took my mind off of some weird bullshit, and made the kitchen smell amazing.

I like the pictures. Here's Hannah enjoying a glass, not completely against her will...