We went off on an excursion today. I wanted a citrus tree, 2 types grafted on one root. I'd heard they were available at a nursery outside Oxkutzcab, a town in the center of the orange growing area of southern Yucatan state. I also wanted some large clay pots for the tree and other plants at the house, those are made in the nearby town of Tikul.

It was a nice drive an hour or so south of Mérida. First stop was lunch in Oxkutzcab, pronounced osh-kootz-kahb. We started looking for a restaurant we used to go to years ago, the town has changed a lot and no one seemed to know where it was. The cop I asked at the square sent us to another place, TuTul. It seems new but very nice and the food was excellent and very traditional Yucatecan. I had Queso Relleno, edam cheese stuffed with ground meat and spices, steamed and covered in a brown gravy. Stephen and Mimi had Poc Chuc, grilled pork seasoned with anchiote and sour orange. I tried it and it was some of the best I've had. Paula had the Relleno Blanco, turkey cooked with a ground pork loaf. It's similar to the more famous Relleno Negro but without the burnt chilis, the sauce is very mild. I forgot to take a picture of the food and instead took one of the intricate palapa roof.

I had neither directions or the name of the nursery so I started my search with the waiters. One of them knew the nursery and off we went. It wasn't quite where he said but asking some construction workers got us there. No sign, no name that I saw but rows and rows of small citrus trees. A supplier of trees for the commercial growers, he had all kinds of citrus and some mamey and mango. You can see the mamey fruit on the large tree at the top right of the picture. It's one of my favorites but the trees are much too large for my house.

These are some kind of citrus being grafted onto the root stock. My new Spanish word for the day was injertar, to graft.

I asked about a dual graft, I wanted the traditional sour orange with a sweet lime. He walked around the rows for a bit and then picked up one small sapling and showed me the 2 grafts and said this was it. I asked how much and it was 8 pesos! That's about 60 cents US.

It's small but I'm thrilled with it. He told me it would be producing in about 18 months and that it would do fine in a large pot in full sun.

With my little tree safely tucked in a box in the back of our truck, we were off to buy a pot for it in Ticul.

That will be tomorrow's post, it's late and I'm tired. We sat up and ate pizza and played dominoes when we got back tonight. It's a tough life.