Dazed_Lily
01-12-2008, 05:31 PM
This is such a great story. It's got a great twist(no pun intended) and has that rescued tree makes good aspect as well. A good read(I wish they had the photo on line--the tree is in a pot in the living room corner and has lemons):
Tree has been giving couple lemons(Wichita Eagle 1/12/08 by Annie Calovich).
It's good to look out the window at 5 p.m. these days and see light rather than imminent darkness. I'm predicting a short winter. In fact, I'm considering every cold day an aberration to the 60 degrees we enjoyed earlier this week.
Bolstering this hope is the fact that a Wichita couple this second week of January has been picking lemons in their living room. They e-mailed me about the tree that has been giving them lemons almost every year for 22 years, and I rushed over to see it, of course.
I found a large tree taking up a corner of the room and bearing almost a dozen big yellow fruits, some of them verging on overripeness.
Lemon tree very pretty
And the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
The song out of my babyhood recorded by Trini Lopez played in my head. Lemon tree very pretty. But the idea of a poor lemon growing in Wichita in January is impossible to me. I've grown small orange bushes indoors with extremely short-term success. I think you'd call them annuals.
So I -- and, according to the Olsons, almost everybody who approaches their tree -- at first thought that the fruit was plastic. It's impossible not to take hold of one of the lemons, as gently as possible so as not to knock it off if it is real but firmly enough to guarantee that there's pulp inside and not air, to be sure.
Poor Olsons, to be doubted about their tree. The fruits are real. When you realize it, you can't help but giggle with the wonder of it.
The Olsons actually wonder at it, too.
The tree is a rescue. Don snatched it from the trash in 1986 when he worked for Hilt's janitorial supply. The tree was about 3 feet tall and had very few leaves.
"It was bone dry," Don said. "I just decided for some reason to bring it home."
"He goes to garage sales and brings too much home, too," his wife said.
It's a wonder they don't have a puppy.
Joyce transplanted the tree in fresh soil and fertilized it, and it eventually began to flourish. The Olsons would take it out in the summer, around Mother's Day, and bring it back in in the fall, before Halloween. It's lived on the front porch and the back patio, the back room as well as the front room. There have been blocks of time, when life was very busy, that the Olsons failed to water the tree, the doors literally closed on the room where it stood. Other years the tree has been trimmed with lights for Christmas.
"I'm totally amazed at how resilient it is," Joyce says.
The Olsons still do little in the way of caring for the tree. The biggest job is getting it in and out of the house, and it gets a light pruning both times, mainly to make sure it can fit through the door. Joyce fertilizes it with Miracle-Gro when it goes outside for the summer, and that's it.
"What I love about it is the leaves grow all along the branch," she said. "Some of the buds turn out to be leaves; some turn out to be lemons."
The fruits at first appear like little limes, hidden amid the green leaves. Then one day Don will notice them and say, "That's got little lemons on it." And then some other day, they'll turn yellow, and it's like the lights have come on.
The lemons usually ripen around Christmastime. One Christmas Day when the tree had produced a bumper crop, the Olsons' three grown children, their spouses and the grandchildren each picked a lemon, piling them in a basket.
Compared with grocery-store lemons, Joyce said, "they're bigger and they're spicier -- more lemony."
Joyce usually uses the lemons in an "old-time lemon pie" recipe from an old Better Homes & Gardens cookbook that declares it "the very best lemon meringue pie you've ever tasted."
It definitely looks good in the picture that serves as the wallpaper on the Olsons' computer. A pie with a couple of pieces already gone, the meringue dripping into the lemon custard, sits on a white chair in front of the lemon tree on the front porch. The fact that this is obviously a summer photo means that the tree has fruited then, too. Don said that sometimes it gets confused.
"We let it do whatever it wants to do," Don says.
Not every year produces lemons. And sometimes the tree starts flowering inside the house in early spring, and the delicate flowers fall off during the move to the front porch.
"We figure we've taken it in and out 40 times," Don said. As he and Joyce get older, they wonder how they'll continue to manage the tree that has been taken for granted much of the time but, in retrospect, has provided so much joy.
"It has literally been a part of our family now for over 22 years," Joyce says.
In retrospect, I think, we can all see that when life gives us lemons and we make lemon meringue pie, life is good indeed.
Tree has been giving couple lemons(Wichita Eagle 1/12/08 by Annie Calovich).
It's good to look out the window at 5 p.m. these days and see light rather than imminent darkness. I'm predicting a short winter. In fact, I'm considering every cold day an aberration to the 60 degrees we enjoyed earlier this week.
Bolstering this hope is the fact that a Wichita couple this second week of January has been picking lemons in their living room. They e-mailed me about the tree that has been giving them lemons almost every year for 22 years, and I rushed over to see it, of course.
I found a large tree taking up a corner of the room and bearing almost a dozen big yellow fruits, some of them verging on overripeness.
Lemon tree very pretty
And the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
The song out of my babyhood recorded by Trini Lopez played in my head. Lemon tree very pretty. But the idea of a poor lemon growing in Wichita in January is impossible to me. I've grown small orange bushes indoors with extremely short-term success. I think you'd call them annuals.
So I -- and, according to the Olsons, almost everybody who approaches their tree -- at first thought that the fruit was plastic. It's impossible not to take hold of one of the lemons, as gently as possible so as not to knock it off if it is real but firmly enough to guarantee that there's pulp inside and not air, to be sure.
Poor Olsons, to be doubted about their tree. The fruits are real. When you realize it, you can't help but giggle with the wonder of it.
The Olsons actually wonder at it, too.
The tree is a rescue. Don snatched it from the trash in 1986 when he worked for Hilt's janitorial supply. The tree was about 3 feet tall and had very few leaves.
"It was bone dry," Don said. "I just decided for some reason to bring it home."
"He goes to garage sales and brings too much home, too," his wife said.
It's a wonder they don't have a puppy.
Joyce transplanted the tree in fresh soil and fertilized it, and it eventually began to flourish. The Olsons would take it out in the summer, around Mother's Day, and bring it back in in the fall, before Halloween. It's lived on the front porch and the back patio, the back room as well as the front room. There have been blocks of time, when life was very busy, that the Olsons failed to water the tree, the doors literally closed on the room where it stood. Other years the tree has been trimmed with lights for Christmas.
"I'm totally amazed at how resilient it is," Joyce says.
The Olsons still do little in the way of caring for the tree. The biggest job is getting it in and out of the house, and it gets a light pruning both times, mainly to make sure it can fit through the door. Joyce fertilizes it with Miracle-Gro when it goes outside for the summer, and that's it.
"What I love about it is the leaves grow all along the branch," she said. "Some of the buds turn out to be leaves; some turn out to be lemons."
The fruits at first appear like little limes, hidden amid the green leaves. Then one day Don will notice them and say, "That's got little lemons on it." And then some other day, they'll turn yellow, and it's like the lights have come on.
The lemons usually ripen around Christmastime. One Christmas Day when the tree had produced a bumper crop, the Olsons' three grown children, their spouses and the grandchildren each picked a lemon, piling them in a basket.
Compared with grocery-store lemons, Joyce said, "they're bigger and they're spicier -- more lemony."
Joyce usually uses the lemons in an "old-time lemon pie" recipe from an old Better Homes & Gardens cookbook that declares it "the very best lemon meringue pie you've ever tasted."
It definitely looks good in the picture that serves as the wallpaper on the Olsons' computer. A pie with a couple of pieces already gone, the meringue dripping into the lemon custard, sits on a white chair in front of the lemon tree on the front porch. The fact that this is obviously a summer photo means that the tree has fruited then, too. Don said that sometimes it gets confused.
"We let it do whatever it wants to do," Don says.
Not every year produces lemons. And sometimes the tree starts flowering inside the house in early spring, and the delicate flowers fall off during the move to the front porch.
"We figure we've taken it in and out 40 times," Don said. As he and Joyce get older, they wonder how they'll continue to manage the tree that has been taken for granted much of the time but, in retrospect, has provided so much joy.
"It has literally been a part of our family now for over 22 years," Joyce says.
In retrospect, I think, we can all see that when life gives us lemons and we make lemon meringue pie, life is good indeed.