I bought a lime tree as a companion to my avocado tree. I have a black thumb—I have killed succulent after succulent—but in an effort to both please a gardener (former) love interest and satisfy an innate farmer’s granddaughter heritage, I purchased these fruit-bearing trees. My avocado tree may bear little fruit, bought with the (former) love interest as it was, but my lime tree has greater hope for success (and is backed by a year guarantee from Lowe’s, who did not pay me to say so).
So I water both trees, and talk to them, and love them.
Within a week of purchase, I find a bud on my lime tree.
And I watch it grow. Within a couple of weeks, from speck to blob to now almost pea-sized! I am growing my first lime!
I am growing a lime!
I eagerly check this lime every morning, just to make sure it’s still there. Sitting on its lime tree branch.
A few weeks after discovering this from speck-blob-pea-sized lime, I am turning the tree to let the sun hit a different angle.
I discover a walnut-sized lime.
I am not excited.
I am confused. Has it been hiding in plain sight the whole time? Can I take credit for its growth if I didn’t know that it was even there? How did I miss it when i was watering my tree?
And then I realize. I chuckle. Ah, my lime tree.
There, just growing, is a lime. Informed by my past, nourished by my love and care, a lime.
A lime and a dime.
I am enough.
