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4.04.05
It is the time of year here in the San Gabriel Valley when you visit people and stand around in gardens talking happily about the gorgeous weather, and everyone tries to send you home with a grocery bag full of citrus. I loaded my mother-in-law down with armfuls of lemons just for decorating . . . just to pile into bowls to look at. Such bounty! Claire and I pick lemons (what kind? I don't know, but they're ours, and they're yum) and Valencia oranges every couple of days. Pick some for us later, pick some for us now, pick some for relatives (only I can't pawn any off on Christy this year, because she has her own . . . lemons and oranges and grapefruit, oh, my!), pick some for friends, and leave some on the ground for the critters.
So I looked out the bay window this morning, and there was a critter! A skunk waddling along our brick pathway, not three feet from me, with a merciful pane of glass inbetween. I ran and grabbed Hyacinth and shut her in the bedroom before she barked out the window and scared it, and then I held Claire up to see.
"Mama!" she shrieked. "Mama! I see the squirrel!"
I like to think that skunk went out back and got himself a little orange snack, but I don't know, because I was too afraid to go out and look. Maybe on a no-company-coming-for-dinner day, but Tim Clark was coming for dinner tonight, and we haven't seen him in almost eight years, so this was no day to run out back and get skunkified.
This is also the time of year that I bust out my three favorite (in no particular order) citrus recipes: 1. Sunshine Pie (a sweet breakfast pie made with orange juice, orange zest, AND orange extract, plus eggs, cottage cheese, and a crust); 2. Orange Ice Cream (just the pretend kind where you freeze whipped cream that has been mixed up with confectioner's sugar and orange and lime zest); and 3. Sangria (white wine, I prefer, with a sugar syrup and citrus slices floating in a big glass pitcher, out on the porch, in the rocking chairs, talking about what-did-you-do-at-work-today-honey and here's-the-funny-stuff-Claire-said-and-did-today-honey).
The bounty doesn't last long, and the orange trees have already blossomed. The smell is so sweet out back from those little flowers that it makes you dizzy, and if you close your eyes you think you've gone to heaven. No, really, you do. And all this fruit so juicy you have to stand over the sink or hang out the window to eat it.
Come August, when I'm thinking L.A. is the armpit of the universe, all smog and heat and more smog, I will try hard to remember these spring months where it really does seem like we're in a land of milk and honey.
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