The Sour Things in Life

Many of you may know the unfortunate truth that Utah's climate is not conducive to growing citrus trees. After smelling those sweet citrus blossoms in a large indoor nursery and being reminded of my grandma's fresh lemonade from her tree in Arizona I decided I had to have one. So last year I bought a dwarf Kaffer Lime tree and a dwarf Meyer Lemon tree and planted them in some pretty little pots. During the hard cold winter my trees sat comfortably warm and protected inside my kitchen nook and to my utter delight they actually blossomed and filled my entire kitchen and dining room with the freshest and most delicious of all aromas. The scent was out of this world spectacular. My favorite smell in the whole world I've decided. You can imagine my excitement when fruit began to grow the first year I had them!

It's been a whole year now and I'm sad to report the Lime tree has since passed away. Not sure why, I saw some white dusty stuff on the top soil so I wonder if it had a mold or fungus problem. But the Lemon tree has been doing great and I've been watching the pretty little lemons grow...and grow... then stop growing... just waiting for the day they turned bright yellow. It's been all summer long and the lemons are about the size of limes and not growing and are still very much green. I kept wondering all summer long when in the world they would turn yellow like the picture on the label. (Which is still attached to the tree by the way).

I've also had to keep a protective eye out for them as the small kids pass by the tree everyday eyeing the "balls". We all know how much kids love balls. I knew from the start the lemons days were numbered. Many were plucked early on but still by the end of summer 7 remained... that is until this past Thursday.

Reportedly Sam picked them, Josh King stomped on them while Carter King stood by and 'innocently' watched. They also threw and stomped on plums and peaches from the other trees. I came home to this bad news delivered by my dear sweet neighbor and friend Jana who sweetly took the carcases and squeezed them into a half cup of lemon juice and kindly presented the offering in a paper cup. We proceeded to make lemonade not sure if the supposed unripe lemons would make a good drink or not. As it turns out they did! Only strangely it tasted more like limes than lemonade? Jana said they reminded her of the limes she had in Guatemala. I'm 95% sure it is indeed the lemon tree since I never removed the label but why would it produce limes? I'm wondering if they crossbred with the lime blossoms? Was the tree mislabeled? It's a mystery to me. I'm still calling them lemons. Lemons that don't know they are lemons.

Jana and I took the time out of our busy day and sipped our precious lime tasting lemonade on the swing in my back yard, yes, in crystal glasses while we enjoying the last bit of good weather. We also found some nice ripe concord grapes on the vine growing up the pergola we were sitting under that the boys had missed in their food fight that day.

Well, after all said and done I'm glad the kids had the "wisdom" to pick the lemon/limes but still not glad enough that we were willing to share the loot with them. That just wouldn't be right since they are still in trouble for messing with my trees. Besides, they were long gone by then busy making yet another terrific mess.