The Orchard is made up of one extremely prodigious Meyer lemon tree that fruits all year round, a very mature and beautiful apple tree that might be a descendant of a 'Red Astrachan' species, a young apricot tree that really 'found its roots' and grew on them this year (four feet!) which bears in May, and a baby seedless orange tree that bore it's first ever crop of juicy oranges with a great tang (Valencia?) in the winter of 2004. We also added three new trees in 2004, an avocado that didn't make it (too much sun), a Santa Rosa Plum tree that politely fruited some for us in late October, and a Monterrey pear tree that made a token offering to us in November.

Other fruits and veggies grown include a passel of different herbs, two barrels o' strawberries, June bearing and 'Year Round'. The 'Year Round' are creepers and the June bearing bear outside of June. ;-) Plus we have two nifty new huckleberry bushes keeping the strawberries company and a monster blackberry bramble that thinks it's going to take over when we're not looking.

Plans for the 2005 season include adding an avocado tree again (we found the perfect spot in our freshly landscaped backyard- thanks Robin! xoxo), a lime tree to cover our citrus bases, and another apple tree to give the 2005 hard cider a more complex flavor. It all depends on what we see at the nursery too; as we intend to put a row of trees down the southern border of our property following the hillside slope to the street. Next year's vegetable garden will also be in full swing.

We didn't finish the new landscaping in the backyard vegetable garden until early August. So we did a small late summer planting anyway to test ourselves, and the freshly built planters. It was a success, and we look forward to tomatoes, carrots, onions, leeks, snap beans, grape vines, a raspberry bush, and some corn in the 2005 garden.

Here's a hard cider toast to the future gardening endeavors at Sunkist Drive in Oakland. Robin and I look forward to sharing the edible treats from our efforts with all of you!