Lemon in the living room

I heard that my favourite garden store in Mississauga was closed due to the pandemic stagnation. I remembered what a great impression it made on me when I went there for the first time years ago, when Julia was very little. The store was not busy, as I went there on a week day morning. It was huge, in a building made up of several connected ones. Of course, the plants were also outside, in the gardens. The whole place had style and atmosphere. I will never forget that visit. The store was so large that I thought there was no one else in it. I found myself there because I saw a lemon tree in the IKEA catalog and decided to install the one like that in the kitchen. A long row of Lisbon Lemon tree pots waited for me at the nursery store that early fall morning. They seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I looked at them and came home impressed by this fairy-tale place with the intention of returning for lemon very soon. I don’t know why I didn’t buy it then, I guess I was scared by the weight of the pots. I went back to the store a few more times, even signed up for the lemon list, but the Lisbon Lemon tree was never there again. 

Finally, when we visited the STORE as part of a weekend family trip, I decided to go for the Meyer Lemon bush, a cross between lemon and mandarin. It’s leaves have a nice lemony smell. The fruit ripened in our apartment all year round, so we had time to observe nature.

Apparently, a Meyer lemon bush is easier to keep in an apartment than a Lisbon lemon tree, so maybe it’s a good thing that we ended up buying it, after all. I also read that growing a lemon from a stone is not possible, but I remember from my childhood that our close friends in Poland grew a lemon from a stone in the 1970s. The tree was huge and impressive. It stood in the kitchen window, completely obscuring it. I remember seeing about 10 large lemons hanging on it. Real lemons, like from the store. It was hard to believe that you can grow citrus in the middle of the communist gray reality that surrounds us, as if against all odds. It was a true gardening achievement.

December