My father’s 92nd birthday was last week, and some of my family congregated yesterday to celebrate at his house in Oceanside. He’s not one to make much fuss about his age, maintaining he doesn’t ever feel old. I think he appreciated that we’d switched the digits on his birthday candles.

His current house is on a residential lot planted with a guava tree and several kinds of citrus. When we left, we were sent home with a couple bags of tangerines and tangelos, sort of a reverse birthday present. Here’s the counter this morning, after we’d already helped ourselves to several of the presents.

Because of the warm winters, we struggle to grow certain kinds of fruit–apricots, for instance–but at least citrus does well. Unfortunately, where my father lives, along with much of San Diego County, is under a citrus quarantine against the Asian citrus psyllid that prohibits moving plants around. [ My post on this last October ]

For a while plants vanished from the local nurseries while they were off getting “treated.” The plants returned with labels detailing their treatment, and verifying that they were legal to sell. Also, there’s a requirement that any commercially grown fruit must be cleaned prior to sale. But fortunately there’s no restriction on transporting and sharing home grown fruit.

Unless you have a young or dwarf tree, sharing fruit is something you almost have to do when the citrus trees do their thing. I was pulling grapefruits off my tree this morning, thinking about doing some sharing myself, when I saw this unusual fruit in the middle of the tree, courtesy the kids next door.

Driving home from my father’s the afternoon ended with some birthday balloons. Here are just a couple of more than a half dozen that were airborne for the sunset rides they offer out of Del Mar. My father is a cautious human being and would never be caught dead in anything like a hot air balloon, but it seemed like they were helping him celebrate his day…