The Orange Chronicles - Day Two

The juice from blood oranges is as beautiful as it is delicious! I love that old glass pitcher which once belonged to the Mister's mom.

I have three of my bloggie friends to thank today. They posted orange pictures this week which reminded me that I have a tree full of ripe oranges! The first is Marianne who posted pictures of breathtaking orange mandalas! Marianne's artwork is just amazing

Mod Girl was next with a beautifully textured post of red and orange objects.

I then found Yaya's latest post which includes a link to Seeker's blog. Seeker wrote an orange poem just for YaYa!

See? You don't have to hit me over the head with an orange crate- just have half of blogdom post orange. And as a thank you I am doing an orange post today for you!

This morning I simmered the oranges that I sliced for marmalade yesterday. They're tender now and the jelly jars are clean and ready for tomorrow!

I also made fresh orange juice for breakfast this morning. I used 32 oranges for the jam and the juice and still have a tree full.

This is my orange tree! We had a good crop despite the draught. In about 2 months the tree will be in bloom again. Citrus trees are the only ones that bloom while fruit is still on the tree. I can leave the oranges up for several months. When they start falling on their own it means I have to pick the remaining oranges.

I took several pictures of orange objects around my house The bird-of-paradise has been in bloom since August. It's past it's prime right now because the flowering has been going on so long there are lots of brown flowers at the back of each bloom.

This is milk weed - I planted it on purpose to attract monarch butterflies. We've had several caterpillars attach their cacoons to the back of the bird of paridise leaves and have watched them emerge as butterflies.

This is a fresh orange mandala for Marianne!

I have an orange candle on the coffee table along with the latest book that I'm reading, the Maltese Falcon. I've seen the movie, with Humphrey Bogart several times and finally decided to read the book. I love the way Dashiel Hammett writes!

The coin at the bottom of the picture is nearly 250 years old! It's a Russian Kopeck minted in 1768 during the reign of Catherine the Great. These coins were tossed to peasants who lined the road to watch Tzarina Ekaterina's carriage pass by.

The rock sitting next to the coin is kyanite crystals in citrine and quartz. The tiny brownish dot at the top of the specimen is an uncut apricot diamond.

The colors in the picture are not true enough to show that the crystal specimen and the beautiful glass pear share the same shades of blue and gold.

This bright orange bottle hangs out on the lanai. After looking at the orange posts I've decided that orange is my favorite color. I'll quit saying it's yellow because that was never really true anyway.