Friday, January 25, 2008

Pretending I still live in California

A year ago for Valentine's Day, Scott surprised me with a Meyer Lemon tree. In the bitter months of winter I had been nostalgic about California weather and in particular about our lemon trees. I had researched and found this variety that was supposed to grow well indoors. (***As a side note, this got added to my list of things I discovered first and then showed up in the big chain catalogs - lemon trees were in William Sonoma catalog the month after I got mine, also my dining room chandelier from ebay and my entry hall light from Mexico ended up in Pottery Barn catalog and my New England Sea Bag ended up in Restoration Hardware catalog - I think they must have some spyware in my house.)

It has yet to produce any actual yellow lemons. There have been plenty of flowers and mini green fruit but none have matured to the point of being able to make lemonade - afterall the whole point of having a lemon tree. Over the summer it really thrived out on the front porch - getting plenty of water and sun. It grew 3 pretty large fruit and then I had to bring it in for the winter. Now it seems to be a bit stagnant - still seems plenty alive but the fruit are not getting any bigger or turning yellow. Every day I examine it. I look at the new growth, I look at the old fruit, I check the soil. I finally put a light on it this week to hopefully help it through the greyness of winter. I just want so badly for it to do well. This is sort of a dumb thing to blog about, but it is a part of my [obviously very exciting] life so I thought I'd share and chronicle the developments.

Grow little tree! Grow! You can do it! Just one cup of lemonade is all we ask for!

4 comments:

Lisa and Mike Marion said...

So I am guessing you have some kind of special plant light bulb in your lamb. I have tried the regular light bulb thing and never got results (although never with a lemon tree). A glass of fresh lemonade sounds rather amazing right now.

sarah said...

It's just a regular 60-watt bulb right now. Do you think I need some special type of plant bulb? Annee - you're the horticulture specialist - what do you think?

Annee said...

Look it up on Google! Saddly horticultural specialist is about the last thing I would call myself these days! It will all come back to me I am sure, but it's missing right now!

Katie said...

Your wallpaper was a reccomendation in a decorating magazine I was looking at recently. You might want to look into having your house swept for "bugs".
Hey, maybe they planted one in the lemon tree and it's impacting it's growth!