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Thursday, November 1, 2012

My Lemon Tree

Last week, as I sat outside enjoying the late-October afternoon sun, a shadow danced across the ground. It made that frisson run through my whole body, that little shiver-up-the-spine-to-the-top-of-the-head. They were back. The butterflies were back. Not just the Monarch, but the Swallowtail and West Coast Lady, too. They had come to visit the lemon tree in my backyard.






I love my lemon tree. It has been in our yard for at least 16 years, and is taller than the house now. It is a Meyer Lemon, sweet and tangy. It is often in bloom and with ripe and unripe fruit all at the same time. Autumn is its most productive season, just in time for winter holidays and wreaths of lemon slices, lemon marmalade and chutneys. It supplies us with wonderful lemonade year-round. My children learned their first lessons in the kitchen with lemons - how to hold a knife, how to balance the flavors of sweet and sour, and how to clean anything with lemon juice.


There is always something interesting going on in that tree, some activity like my busy bumblebee, legs laden with pollen. Honey bees nestling in the center of the flowers. Spiders weaving miraculous festoons between the branches. Butterflies flitting around, pausing briefly for me to see their incredible beauty. The joy these insect creatures bring me cannot be explained logically. They lift my spirits and allow me to rise above the ego's ploys and experience the emotions of a life of purpose - joy, peace, worthiness. They have a job to do, they know what it is, and they fulfill it with diligence and grace. Why do we humans struggle so with this?

There are other visitors to my lemon tree. Anna's Hummingbirds frequently find nectar in the flowers and sit in the branches singing their little "bzzzzeee bzzzzeee bzzzzeee." For several months during the summer, in the morning, I would find perfectly peeled lemons hanging on the tree like blown-glass Christmas ornaments. The yellow zest lay on the picnic table in curls, having been stripped of its white pith. Who could possibly be the culinary genius? Snails? They do go after the just-right ripe fruit but they are not so thorough. Ants? Too small for such a large task. Birds? They would peck, not peel. No. It was the rats. Flavonoids occur in concentration in this layer of lemons, and have amazing health benefits according to some studies (here's a link to get you started if you want to look into this). They knew just how to get to the most nutritious part of these wonderful fruits.  Not everyone in the household was as thrilled with this bit of information as I, so the tree was trimmed away from the fences and the rats no longer make their surreptitious forays into the yard. It seems their message was not for me.

On the Northern California coast it is too cold and foggy for the heat-loving fruits and vegetables that I used to grow back East. But the lemon tree provides me with year-round treasure. I must remember to sit under it more often, every day, even if just for a minute or two.

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