The only thing that I can find that is a small orange the size you are describing is a kumquat. Here is a page that you can look at and see if maybe this is what you have growing in the yard. http://www.fruitsinfo.com/Kumquat-Exotic-fruits.php
Oh @Ina I. Wonder , this cracked me up because I had just seen @Diane Lane post with picture of the bug. Then I started down the thread and just landed on your reply and saw "has a sweet lemony/grapefruit flavor" LOL!! I had to go back and read more of the posts to realize the topic changed
I've heard of Box Elder trees, but don't know what they look like, or if there are any around here. Now I have something to look up , thanks @Louise Williams. Yuck, I seriously hate bugs. I didn't realize Box Elders (or Boxelders) are maples. The bugs do look similar, and the leaves look familiar, so maybe we do have some form of those nearby. Here's the page i was looking at with the bugs on it.
I have been growing Aloe Vera all my life, and I've used it for everything from burns to my children's zits. But today is the first time I've seen this one bloom. I've had a few bloom before, but their flowers were white. This one I've taken and started from a tiny piece. I've had it for many years now, so I wasn't expecting it to bloom. I just noticed it today.
I was thinking that looked like my neighbor's firecracker plant, but I'm not sure if hers is attached to aloe vera or cactus. It does sort of look like a pencil cactus, I wonder if they're related?
All I know about this cactus is that is a thorny varagated Aloe Vera. The healing properties seem to be the same as my regular Aloe Vera. I just fell in love with this one, and it does seem to grow faster than the normal solid green ones.
In our front yard, we have a perennial garden, mostly. Over the years, we have bought countless packets of wildflower mixes, as well as live plants that we planted there, and several bulbs, which the squirrels often move around. We have also adopted any flowering weed that shows promise. As a result, we pretty much have something flowering there throughout the late spring, summer, and fall. The problem is that we don't know what many of them are. Well, it's not a problem really, but I am sometimes curious as to what some of them are, from time to time. When you plant from seed, you don't get a flower or even much of a plant the first year, at least not in Maine where we have a short growing season. So when something comes up and produces an interesting flower, it could have come from pretty much anywhere. Here are a couple. I am pretty sure this is something that we planted, either as a live plant or from seed, but I don't know what it is. The plant with the purple flowers is, I think, probably a weed, because there are some growing along the railroad tracks too.
Whether these plants, campanula, if that's what they are, were a weed or part of one of the wildflower mixes that we planted, they are popping up everywhere, in bright sunlight and deep shade, and they hold their flowers for a long time. Maybe if the lupines don't produce in the back yard, I'll plant these.
Here's another one that I like, and this may be the one that I dug up at the town compost pile. They are rather wild-looking, but the bees love them.
That plant is red monarda: bee balm. The wild form is lavender pink. It comes in rose too. The purple flower I have see around, don't know the name. But, as my oldest says:"A weed is just a plant growing where you don't want it." BTW that monarda will take over a space eventually.