Death of a Lime Tree

Today was a sad day at our house.  First Tom held a wake for our lime tree:

Then Tom used the opportunity to teach Lukas how to prune a tree properly:

Before he killed the lime tree completely.

I know our friends and margarita party devotees are wondering why we killed the golden goose lime tree that produces spectacular limes in abundance.  About a month ago, Lukas found a large mushroom growing out of the side of the tree.  It was unlike other mushrooms I've seen before, and Tom being the green thumb that he is, had to find out what kind of mushroom it was.  He found pictures that looked like Armillaria fungus, which is bad news for anyone's backyard as well as any kind of forest.  We submitted bark samples to the Orange County Ag Commission, who tested it and confirmed it's Armillaria.

So before the tree died a savage death, or worse, spread it to our other trees, Tom took it down.  In the picture above, you can see a large root under the spade:  that is a root from the old avocado tree I had removed 10 years ago.  It's likely that the fungus came from that old root that was left in place.  So Tom also made sure that the old root was removed.  But now that area is infected and cannot have a lime tree growing in it, probably for as long as we'll live here.

But all is not lost, fellow limeade and margarita lovers!  We will plant another lime tree in another part of the yard and we have big plans for the area where the lime tree is no longer (Tom is not-so-secretly happy that it turned out to be positive for Armillaria...his plans have something to do with the fact that we will soon have three boys who need more opportunities to climb outside.)