Even if we’re not experiencing typical February
temps hovering around freezing (it’s supposed to be 71 bleeding degrees tomorrow,
for crying out loud), I’m keeping my potted garden inside.
My two surviving herbs—rosemary and parsley—are
producing nicely for various meals, and I have hopes for the gardenia. That one
gave me a few flowers last summer when it was out on the patio, and I fancy I
see the start of more that will come out this year.
However, the one I’m really, really praying for
is the dwarf Meyer lemon. I grew up with a lemon tree (and an avocado, and a
plum and a persimmon, although that one I loathed) in our back yard, and it’s
burnt my bacon ever since I moved out and had to pay for lemons at the
supermarket. We used to harvest the lemons (which I recall were a year-round
crop) and squeeze the juice into ice cube trays. Even when we didn’t have
lemons, we had juice by the bagful.
Even in the Valley They Call Silicon, it was
possible to scrump lemons off front-yard trees as you walked past, so coming
back to the District They Call Columbia brought me back into citrus sticker
shock. So I bought a dwarf lemon. I’d have preferred Eureka, but by the time a
mail-order nursery had totally screwed up, I had to take what I could get from Merrifield
Gardens.
So I nursed it through one cycle of blossoms
last summer, but no fruit. Then a second in late autumn, apparently ditto. So imagine
my excitement when, a few weeks ago, I noticed little green nobs that might be
proto-lemons.
At this point, there are three, recognizable
lemons, and I am reveling in anticipatory joy.
I’m not seeing full ice cube trays of lemon juice
in my immediate future. But I am so looking forward to the idea of having the
makings of homemade lemonade, lemon-roasted chicken, limoncello, lemon curd,
Pavlovas…
And I’m going to check out dwarf limes and
orange trees, too.
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