Old Faithful

We are not good farmers. We forget to water. We neglect to fertilize. We leave our fruit trees to struggle against wind, weather and insects down on the lower forty, all by themselves. Still they reward us, year after year, with unexpected produce. A case in point, the lemon tree.

The poor little thing is sickly, with yellowed leaves and straggly branches, competing for light with an overgrown but gorgeous flowering crab that delights us each spring with rose-colored buds and lavish white flowers. I may have hammered one of those food spikes into the ground on the steep hillside above the lemon tree 12 years ago when we moved into this house and I was seized pride of homeownership, but that's the last help I ever gave it. Yet it continues to produce lemons, not very many but really good, tart ones, every year. They always look like this, sort of scarred and weary, when I remember to scramble down the steep incline to pick them, which isn't often. Sometimes, they ripen and fling themselves down the hill into the street below in a desperate bid for attention from passing joggers.

We are not good stewards of our tiny plot of land - we don't deserve the faithful service the lemon tree gives us, but we are grateful.