Audition tapes, wife swapping, and lemon trees
We
played hookie Thursday morning to help our movie star neighbor film an
audition tape. I was a bit daunted by the idea of reading lines
with him, but was thrilled once I learned I didn't have to be on
camera...and found out that we'd get some of his homegrown honey as
payment. I forgot to mention that the
beeswax we used to seal over our oyster mushroom plugs also came from this same
neighbor, traded for a dozen eggs. It sure is fun to barter with
like-minded souls!
When the camera stopped
running, I drooled over our neighbor's Meyer lemon tree. I posted a
picture of it last year,
loaded down with over a hundred fruits, and this year the tree felt
like it was twice as big. I hesitate to call it a "dwarf"
anymore, although the lemon isn't tall --- just six feet wide.
"My tree is so big, I can't move it outside any more," our neighbor
complained. "That's part of the reason I want to add a room to
the house, to give my lemon space to grow. I feel like I'm
married to a tree," the bachelor finished, in mock despair.
"I
can take it off your hands if you want," Mark said, ever helpful.
"I'd trade my wife for two of them."
Okay, so Mark only
mentioned the part about two trees when I got indignant at only being
worth as much as one lemon plant. Luckily for us both, our
neighbor only had the one tree on hand, so we decided to beef up our
own lemon tree's existence instead. Our neighbor attributes a lot
of his success to the huge pot his lemon tree is growing in --- it
looks to be about ten gallons in capacity. We'll have to plan on
hunting down a couple of mammoth pots to give our citrus room to grow.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I did not say that!
I offered to trade lemon trees and would never trade a good woman for a fruit tree of any kind!
Mark --- aw, I was kidding.
Eliza --- I can't imagine life without our Meyer lemon now that we have it. Maybe in a few years, our tangerine will be equally indispensable! Actually, that was one of the reasons we added on the new room --- so we could have a huge, south-facing window to give our citrus room to grow!
Stacy --- your lemon will like lots of sun, so a sunny window (or, better yet, a grow light over it in the winter.) They're also very hungry, so be sure to feed it regularly. I give mine all of the compost tea from our worm bin, along with top-dressings of compost and stump dirt. The combination seems to keep it happy, but if I forget for a couple of months the leaves start to yellow! Also, don't let the dirt stay soggy. Overall, they're not too hard, and you'll have great fruits in no time!
Roland --- good suggestion! We may keep that in mind for later, but yesterday we picked up two big pots at a nursery. They were discards from trees they'd sold and were about 15 gallons --- should cheer my lemon right up.