The One Lone Lemon Tree

November 18, 2009

During my seminary years D and I lived in campus housing on the top floor of a three story building comprised of 9 private apartments. We were on the top floor (did I mention no elevator?) with our bedroom window located across a narrow alley and under the campus dining hall kitchen where Spanish-speaking workers began boisterously laughing while clanking pots and pans every morning at 5:30 a.m. At the end of the same alley was the main road and just across the road was a live-in drug treatment residence where their version of sobriety included waking all the residents up at sunrise to join in a rambunctious round of calisthenics in their private parking lot. The noise made me want to drink.

Three years later we began our search for a home and found it in paradise. We bought a two-story condo on the edge of a small town about 30 minutes outside of Berkeley where you don’t have to wait until 10:00 p.m. to find a parking spot at the grocery store and discarded condoms don’t occasionally find their way onto your front yard. I don’t even want to know.

One of the things we love the most about where we live is that the condonimums are all located in a horse-shoe shape around a lush courtyard of grass, trees, heritage flowers planted and maintained by a couple who’ve lived here for a number of years, and a pool. Not only is it beautiful with something always in bright bloom but the only sound I wake up to every morning is the chatter of a single family of birds who live in one of the trees at the edge of the courtyard nearest our bedroom window. I will confess to wishing I had a sling shot on the occasion morning when their chirping makes sleeping in impossible, but at least it’s never been annoying enough to make me wish for a shot glass.

And then there’s the communal lemon tree that’s located to the side of the walkway that runs around and behind the complex. One big lemon tree that has enough lemons at peak harvest for every resident to enjoy but that never happens because somewhere among the condo owners is a lemon hoarder. I don’t know how this mystery tree stripper does it but those lemons are no more yellow for five minutes than the tree is picked bare of every orb of citrusy goodness. I thought it was just my imagination but when I was talking to one of our neighbors about it she confirmed that in all the years she and her husband have lived here they’ve never found a single lemon left on the tree.

Well, the lemon thief might not know it, but the times, they are a’changing….beginning this year and beginning with me! And so for the past two weeks I’ve gone out every morning and every evening with my extension grabby stick in hopes of finding a ripe lemon and so far my ventures have yielded two lemons with at least 50 lemons in various stages of ripening waiting for my return.

With the bountiful first harvest of two lemons I made candied lemon peels and gave them to our lemon-deprived neighbor and then reserved the pulp and lemon juice which I intend to add to over the next few weeks until I have enough in the freezer to make a jumbo batch of lemon curd that along with homemade scones will be shared with as many neighbors as possible. If the tree is on shared property then the fruit from the tree should be enjoyed by as many people as possible. And who knows? Since I don’t know who the repeat lemon tree violator is there’s every chance they might be among those who in the near future will breakfast on scones, lemon curd and cream. If that happens I must confess that the thought of that scoundrel getting a treat from the tree after years of plucking it clean makes me want to drink a lemon drop.

Posted in Daily Life, Photography