I just watered the lemon tree and am getting "so 'cited" to see how many lemons its growing right now! I've tried not to fuss over it very much, to spook it into dropping them, but so far, so good.
*
For those who don't know the story of the lemon tree, I will tell (my foreign accent there!).........not long after Timmy died, his teacher, Mrs. Booth, called to tell us that Timmy's lemon seed had broken through the ground. What? We didn't know anything about this. Apparently after Christmas break, the pre-k class planted a seed from a lemon tree in a Styrofoam coffee cup and were watching for them to pop through the soil. They'd kept Timmy's going and when it sprouted, she called me. I picked up the cup when I got Justin after school and sure enough, there it was, a tiny tree!
*
We nurtured it, moving the tiny plant into a larger container when it outgrew the foam cup. Eventually the seedling became a tree and we transplanted it into a large plastic planter on a wheeled stand, and let it spend some time outside in the sun and pollen. About four years ago it made a single lemon, more the size of an orange, which I promptly stored in the freezer. (I didn't mention that in my "Fond, Frozen Remembrances" posting....)
*
The following year the tree surrendered three lemons, one of which I cut into, to harvest more seeds. I planted those seeds and eventually got several more seedlings to grow. They were divided into two pots, one of which "disappeared" from the base of the big tree. I gave a few of the seedlings to Timmy's father so he could have an off-shoot as well. I squeezed one into a sort of lemonade and froze the remaining one.
*
Upon moving to the condo, the tree seemed upset, lost all its leaves two years in a row, and made no more lemons. Upon inspection, it became obvious that the tree had a disease of some sort, tiny bugs making white gobs under the leaves, and so on. Last early fall, Fausto, who is a Master Gardener, gave me a recipe for a concoction to spray on the tree every couple weeks to knock out the bugs, and IT WORKED!
*
After re-doing my "river room" this past December, I decided the tree needed to come inside, to protect it from any further infestation. It is safe to do that now that Boots was gone, and wouldn't use the tree as a substitute cat box! I had to move the green plants from the funeral outside because of that rascal, and now have only a few of those left. Cats!!!
*
And now, the lemon tree is trying to produce just a few more pieces of fruit for Mama, so she can cut them open to find more seeds to grow more seedlings......
No comments:
Post a Comment