Lemonita!

Reader Dear, it's what I named my little lemon tree as soon as I had her ensconced in a plastic bag and safely in the car.

The HM and I were heading speedily north.  (Alas, homeward bound, though we still had a few more stops)

It was early on in our trip up the country, but we needed to get gas, and we'd noticed that the spots where we could fill up the tank were few and far between.  The needle on the gauge was asking "How low do you think I can go?!" 

I was just ready to sigh, and say, "I guess you're going to have to SHOW US"
when we came to this little place ...uh...
FCC 60, 462544 State Route 200, Yulee, Florida.

After purchasing gas, the HM was running around buying armloads of fresh oranges and grapefruit from the bins out in front of the store (And, oh,  Orange you glad I did?! that HM could have asked me.  That fruit was over-the-moon!)

But, back to my Lemonita. I watched HM buying fruit and thought, Why buy eggs when you can buy the chicken?! Then I went ahead and translated that into a metaphor for buying a fruit tree.

Lesley*, when I begged her for advice, helped me to find the most healthy-looking lemon tree.  She wrote down the elixir  that she feeds her own lemon tree twice a year:

I jotted her other instructions:
--Inside if below 50
--Prune
--Do NOT over-water
--Re-pot when root-bound


My Lemonita is bringing me such pleasure, now that I am back in the north country again.   I sing to her every day:


 "Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet!"  

I do NOT sing any other lyrics of that song to her**
I do NOT over-water her.

I hope that Lemonita is  still rewarding me well when she is 50, and I can take her outside.



**(The fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat?!  [What nonsense!]).  
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Soon after leaving Yulee, the sky clouded up and it began to rain.  For the remainder of the day, we drove through about a bathtub's worth of rain per minute (You'll just have to take my word for this, Dear Reader.  It's an estimate [obviously, as bathtub sizes vary]).
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*She had a nametag.