Lemon Tree
Just recently following a three week road trip to New York, we returned home to find our lemon tree in bone dry soil, littered in faded yellow leaves, starved of water, nutrients and care. After a day of saturating the soil the leaves sprang back but the tree had become bare, missing half of its leaves with no promise of fruit to come. Google horticulture took me to the cupboard seeking any possible form of magnesium or potassium. I took every unopened dust covered children’s multivitamin bottle that my daughter refused to take over the years. I planted dinosaur shaped magnesium and raspberry flavored iron tablets and planted them in the rehydrated soil. I dumped half of a bag of Trader Joe’s dark roast coffee on the top of the soil. Over the following week the tree had sprouted dozens of flowers and nearly immeasurably number of new leaves.
It was the summer we returned to LA we bought a thirty-somethin’ dollar Home Depot lemon tree and brought it home to our tiny Los Feliz studio apartment and put it in our patio. We had this weird little diorama outdoor space. A courtyard wrapped by a blue picket fence, grass turf and a swing set. Surrounded by four walls with a few stories of dozens of windows belonging to dozens of neighbors. It wasn’t private but it was privately ours and absolutely unique.
The sun only shown on the lemon tree for a few short hours a day. I ritually moved the tree to the western wall as the sun ascended from the east, and hours later moved the tree to the eastern wall as the sun descended into the west. Struggling to stay green, it wasn’t until I moved the tree to Long Beach on a fully exposed patio where it began to thrive and fruit. The first flower to successfully fruit budded by June taking almost 5 months to grow and ripen.
Dozens followed over the following few years. Clover loves to water and nurture our lemon tree but has never once tried one. During a time where your child learns to manipulate you into buying them a toy for somebody else’s birthday, it’s amazing to watch them do something so selfless. The lemon tree has so much love and family memory with every bud that fruits and fruit that falls. When the tree becomes sturdy enough to withstand the Mojave, it will be planted at the desert house for everyone to enjoy.
