“Thanks for coming out and looking over my orchard, Clem. I’m tearing my hair out here.”
“Sorry, Fred, couldn’t tell.”
“Why, thank y …”
“You didn’t have no hair to pull out nohow.”
“[…]”
“Amirite?”
“You’re also old enough to know better. Or that’s what I thought. I might still have some if it weren’t for the oranges!”
“Hm. What oranges?”
“Precisely! I can grow grapefruit, pomelos, lemons, kumquats, limes, any kind of citrus you care to name. I could probably grow truthms, even in this climate! But oranges, forget it. Valencias, navels, mandarins, clementines. Doesn’t matter. They all die! Why? I have no clue.”
“Surprised at you, Fred. Answer’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“That’s two …”
“Get over it. See them hedges and windbreaks you’ve got all over this place? Chop ’em down. Get rid of ’em.”
“But …”
“Replant ’em with something else. Cost you a few years of wind damage, but hey, you won’t get oranges any other way.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Hang it, Fred, they’re mock oranges! You know trees talk to each other, right?”
“Wrong.”
“Well, you’d better learn up. You ain’t gonna get fruit off of trees with no self esteem. And oranges ain’t gonna get none of that, not while you’ve got all these Murraya bushes standing there and beating on them all of the time.”
“You mean, like you’ve been beating on me, Clem?”
“Do I make my point, or don’t I?”
Timely–not only are the Mock Oranges trying to kill me, I am listening to the gradual erosion of someone’s self-esteem in the conversation being carried on by a young couple one chair over.