Small Trees

I went to H & H Nursery in Bellflower this morning to buy an orange tree for the front yard and saw they had a small selection of California natives. In particular, they had Ceonothus "Concha" in five-gallon containers, so I bought two.

First, the orange.


I bought a standard Valencia Orange tree, in part because I've read that my soil quality is so poor, it will probably dwarf its growth anyway and a dwarf tree may remain in puny size forever. I chose Valencia because I'm more likely to juice or zest on orange than eat it. I didn't center the tree in the middle of the yard because of the sprinkler heads.

On either end of the house in the planter boxes, I've put Ceonothus "Concha," a California wild lilac. It's listed as a "medium-sized shrub," and here's the description: "Concha flowers heavily, beginning in late winter, and produces 1.5 inch-long clusters of luminous cobalt blue flowers. Its dark, narrow 1-inch-long leaves have a warty surface that glints appealingly in the such, and its graceful, arching branches form a dense 6-to 8-foot tall mound."



And, of course, for Halloween, I have to have a Jack O'Lantern.