Lemons

My husband and I purchased our house nearly two years ago.  The "pro" side of our list of reasons why we picked this house was full of the usual things like location, number of bedrooms, kitchen size, and so on.  At the bottom of the list I remember noting that I liked that there were citrus trees in the backyard.  The first fall we lived here I was able to harvest probably at least 20 lemons off of two trees, and set off making homemade lemonade.  This past fall I was discouraged when I couldn't find one single lemon.  I was at a loss for how my trees had been so fruitful one year, and barren the next.

One of the trees has become mutated and a bit dwarfed as it struggles for sunlight.  It is shaped as though it got blown sideways during a hurricane and was never properly braced upright again.  This past weekend as I was working in the backyard, I noticed something really quite special.  Beneath the twisted and deformed branches, I spotted three nearly ripe, perfectly shaped, bright yellow lemons.  I was so ecstatic that I rushed to our other tree to see what fruit it had to bear.  To my surprise, the other tree, was covered in tiny white blossoms with a speck of pink, brilliantly flickering in the wind, waiting for it's turn to produce fruit.  Two trees in one yard - one at the end of it's production cycle and one just beginning.

The popular saying goes "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade."  That little saying reminds us to find the beauty in life - the silver lining, if you will.  My life has not been filled with lemonade by any means, but it is still a great life.  Sometimes it's the little things in life, like lemon trees, that I need to remind me of the wonders of life.  So when life gives you lemons, make lemonade...or paint a wall a bright, cheery yellow.  That's what I did.

Before (notice ugly blue/gray in the stairway)

After