Lemons

Last year the lemon tree in our patio gave us something like 35 lemons, spread out over quite a few weeks. It looked like a dying tree, with some kind of infestation curling its leaves. During the dry season I watered it a few times and gave it a bit of fertilizer.

And this year it has been producing about 35 lemons every day. What can you do with 35 lemons a day? I've been making and drinking lemonade in quantity; I've frozen lemon juice cubes; and I have a big bottle of lemon juice in the refrigerator. Each day we put that morning's lemon harvest in the black clay bowl on our table. When I pray in the morning, looking out into the patio, there's a scent of lemon everywhere. The lemons keep coming and when I look up at the tree, it still has lemons beyond counting.

So we've been doing what people in the Northwestern U.S. do when the zucchinis ripen: every day, we try to figure out who we can give lemons to. Margaret Jane takes them to the Centro Arte para la Paz, I take them on all my trips to the capital. What a glorious excess! And for years I imagined how wonderful it would be to have a lemon tree in my yard. It IS wonderful to be bombarded with this glorious excess.