We do incredibly stupid things with Key West trees. Like the mango tree in my side yard, which breaks all the rules for “right tree, right place.”

• Plant 30 feet from your house and foundation.
  • Mine’s 6 feet from the kitchen door.
• Plant 20 feet from patios.
  • Mine’s IN the patio.
• Plant 30 feet from pools, underground septic and utilities.
  • The trunk of mine is 5 feet from the pool and the canopy spreads over half of it. Thank goodness the city water main and the utilities are on the other side of the house.
• Keep it pruned to 12 to 15 feet (ditto the canopy spread).
  • Mine tops 30 feet and the canopy spreads at least 20 feet across my roof and pool. We prune back a third every couple of late summers and still that sucker acts like it never had a haircut.
• Remember the feeder root system, which lies in the top 3 feet of soil, and which spreads horizontally twice as wide as the canopy.
  • For my mango that means those roots are under my house pushing against and under the foundation, wrapped around the pool and trespassing under the neighbor’s deck.
• There’s a 15-to-20 foot deep taproot that grows vertically in search of water.
  • Given that it’s growing in limestone and the island isn’t known for underground fresh water, your guess is as good as mine on what that taproot slurps down there. (Aside: My nose might be giving me a hint since there’s a subtle diesel scent underlying the ubiquitous mango bouquet. Plus I’m just a half dozen blocks from that 1991 fuel spill plaguing the Garrison Bight. Been eating them for almost two decades. Not dead yet.)

The feeder roots long ago lifted the lip of our pool, though they’ve not punched through the walls — so far. For now I’m betting I’ll be dead before that happens. The new owner’s gonna replace that ancient pool anyway and there’s plenty of room at the back of the lot to slide a new pool away from the mango. (Don’t let me be hearing in the afterlife that you chopped down the tree. My ghost will make your life miserable.)

Key West mango season: What the heck do I do with these?

The flowers clog the pool filter in late winter and demand triple sweeps daily to keep them corralled. The leaves drop constantly because the tree’s giving its all to growing fruit, so to heck with leaves.

Ours is a Haden, a classic developed for South Florida in Coconut Grove around 1910. It thrives in our Zone 11b climate: temperatures between 75 and 95 degrees, no frost and lots of sunlight. This winter most of the island’s mango trees escaped the windstorms that can take the flowers with them. That has made for a super harvest. Hadens are hardy trees, reasonably drought tolerant and they love our dry winters and rainy summers like we had last year. If we don’t get rain this summer, next season’s crop could be sparse.

Having a mango tree in your yard is like raising kids. You sure do love them, but darned if you like them all that much during the process.

I love me ONE perfect mango daily. That’s about a cup of sliced fruit and 200 calories — twice the calories of a banana and four times a cup of watermelon. Not exactly a diet dish, though it beats eating a cup of chocolate chips, I guess. But what in the heck do you do when the daily mango harvest is easily two dozen?

At the beginning of the season, you’re every mango-loving friend’s favorite supplier. That fades fast and even a best friend pretends not to be home when they see you coming. If you’re lucky (and we are), you’ve got cooking pros waiting with bags and boxes to cart away hundreds over the season. You save plastic bags for months so anyone who walks up to your door leaves with a dozen. The mail carrier. The pool guy. The plumber and electrician. Ranger Ed never leaves the house without a bag to deliver. By the end of the season, you’re hanging bulging bags on the fence with a “free mangoes” sign.

Oh, sure, you can make purees and slices to freeze, smoothies and bread and cobblers and salsas, pickles and punches and bread pudding (mangoes are great with guava, BTW). Been there, done that. And still those mangoes pound on the metal roof and plop into the pool. This morning one bounced from the roof to the table and smashed a 6-pound glass terrarium. See what I mean about loving but not liking your kids?

This year I’m dehydrating 12 pounds of mangoes every day. Each batch takes about an hour of prep time and 16 hours in the dehydrator at 135 degrees. Give or take a few, 12 pounds reduces to 10 to 12 ounces. They’ll last for a year, take up almost no space and they are way tastier than the ones in those teeny-tiny bags at the store for $2 an ounce. And mine have no pesticides, no sugar, no additives. How smug am I?

My return on investment is, thus far, in the red by about 50 bucks. The dehydrator cost me $150 and I’ve got about 50 ounces of dehydrated mangoes. I am, however, optimistic. There’s at least 20 more days of 12-per-day mangoes on the tree, which at $2 an ounce, means I’ll see a plus-$350 ROI by season’s end. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway. Def better than the $50 tomato I grew 10 years ago. Sigh. Time to slice up today’s dozen.