When Life Hands You Lemons

Hey, you know what we haven't done for a long time? A gratitude!

I'm grateful that my citrus crop survived the recent freeze.


I love my lemon tree. It's one of four plants on our property that were here when we moved in. The mulberry tree, the wax-leaf privet, and the Tournament of Roses rose bush are the other three. The gardener hates two of them. He trims the privet back so far that it looks like a wicker basket with a handful of leaves tangled in it. I've never discussed it with him, because I've got this thing about the privet. I hate it as well, but I won't be the one to say we should get rid of it. That'd be the perfect spot for the Japanese maple, but I feel like I'd be betraying the privet by making the suggestion. So we do this wordless dance, Ron the Gardener and I. He buzz-cuts the privet in an attempt to get me to say I want it gone, and I pretend to like it that way, looking like a twig lollipop.

He's not shy about telling me that the mulberry will eventually destroy everything within a five hundred yard radius of its trunk. Good luck with that, Ron. I'm not taking out the only source of shade in my front yard just because it's going to crush my sewer line and the sewer lines of my seven closest neighbors, and crack the foundation of my house, and possibly send a taproot down to plumb the very waters of the river Styx. It gets hot out here, man! I need that tree.