I’ve been growing a pair of apple trees for a couple of years now. They haven’t always gotten the care they deserve, and with some renovation of our irrigation systems at home, they haven’t gotten the proper watering either. For most fruit trees it takes a couple of years before they start to produce, and we’ve been waiting patiently.

I grew up in the Town-n-Country area and in our backyard, we had a couple of apple trees. In my memory we had decent harvests. Enough for my mom to make a delicious Apple Brown Betty each year. Even decades later, I can still smell it baking. Yum.

So of course, I want to relive that memory and make some of my own. But our trees haven’t produced their first harvest. Or so I thought. The other day while I was meandering around my yard, looking for things to do, I happened to look up. And there to my surprise was a little apple. Perfectly shaped, just in miniature. I’d never even noticed flowers this spring. But there was this little fruit, so it had to have bloomed at some point. Upon closer investigation, I found two more little fruits on the other tree. It’s given me great hope that one of these years, I’m going to have an amazing harvest of Florida apples.

And on a whim the other day, I harvested that little apple and gave it a try. We aren’t sure if it’s from our Anna or Dorsett Gold, but it was a tasty, crisp little apple. A great sign of things to come.

While apples are a less-common fruit in Florida, there are so many types of fruits that call Florida home, and if you are like me, you want one of each of them in your yard! As we roll into November, we are also heading into our winter season. I’ve heard predictions both ways about winter: Cold and Dry, Mild and Wet, so at this point, we’ll just have to see what happens. But one thing you can do is to be prepared. So join me this Saturday for our Winter Prep for Fruit Trees seminar where we’ll talk about how to protect fruits if we do get a frost or freeze and how you can plant new ones to give them the best chance of weathering the cold. And if you don’t want to have to protect tropical trees, we’ll talk about the various cold-hardy options you can plant as well. Come on out and tantalize your taste buds! What’s more, all Fruit Trees are 20% off this week.

And as we turn our thoughts from Halloween to Thanksgiving, it’s a great time to be intentional about practicing gratitude. If you really want to bring self-care and gratitude together, join us for November’s Yoga with Gratitude in the Garden. It’s at a different time than usual, 1 pm this Saturday. Click here to get your tickets, we look forward to seeing you in the garden and on the mat.