"Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, But the fruit of the lemon is impossible to eat. Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, But the fruit of the lemon is impossible to eat." ~ Peter, Paul, and Mary/Will Holt
I can't seem to get used to the stove at our house. To be fair though, did I ever really give it a chance? Didn't I say from day one that I hated that stove and was hoping to replace it once there was extra cash in the budget for a new one? Wasn't I the one who said the odor of the propane reeks of decaying broccoli and no matter how many times I light that stove I can never remember that that odor is the propane. I guess its better than having an electric stove, so I shan't complain too much. We had an electric stove in our very first postage stamp sized kitchen apartment many many years ago. I swear I never did figure out how to use that thing so that the burner wasn't scorching hot some times then at other times it was just barely hot enough.
I thought, since we were at the house earlier this week, that I'd try to treat the upstate stove with a little more respect than I had been. I bought an oven thermometer hoping to get an idea of how much the temperature varied so when I used the oven I wouldn't get surprises that made me curse the stove to damnation. I put a few loaves of bread through it, hoping to get some nice baguettes with a good crusty outside and a nice crumb on the inside. I guess I had overdrawn on my oven karma because all I got for my troubles was a horrific looking burn on my left hand, and some wimpy bread. stupid oven
On a much brighter note, I rescued my first ever Meyer Lemon tree from a terrible existence at the Lowe's garden center. I’ve always wanted one of these but have always believed I did not possess the gardening gene. A fact you would agree with if you ever saw the state of my spider plants, but I digress. Anyway, I rescued the tree and the tree and I couldn't be happier, let’s hope I can keep it alive. As you can see from the picture above, it was just starting to flower when I brought it to the house and by the time we left to come back into the city a few days later, the buds had opened and the tree was sending off the most delightful perfume. Meyer lemons are really wonderful to use in cooking and since you know how much I love a lemon, I’m hoping one day I’ll get a chance to harvest lemons from my very own tree. This type of tree is scary though, no?
I repotted the tree in order to give it more room to grow, as well as giving it a face lift by changing it's look from plain :
to just plain fabulous!
The pot itself is amazing, it's made of some sort of crazy new material that makes it look like terra cotta but it’s really some sort of lightweight compressed foam. It may look heavy, but even our wee little Ellie could probably lift it!
Inspired by the nice weather, while at the Lowe's garden store I spent what seemed like hours wandering around with my mouth open touching everything and just marveling at all the things you can buy related to gardening. I purchased some herb and flower seeds, a soil testing kit, some gloves, a spade, pruning sheers, seed starter pellets, some soil and plant food. Mind you, I know nothing about gardening but I'm really excited to try it and may have mentioned that I was going to start a small container herb garden this year, working my way to bigger and better things like a veggie garden next year if I found that I like gardening. I started the first seeds:
I made a grid on some paper and wrote down row by row what seeds I sowed into the peat so that once they start coming in I'm not standing around scratching my head trying to figure out what they are.
I also bought some craft sticks and using a waterproof marker I wrote what each plant was with the intention of using the stick later on to identify plants once they were in the soil.
In addition to some seedlings my friend Cathy gave me, (Hi Cathy, I put them outside) I started my own batches of:
So excited! The list of herbs I plant will probably grow because there are many I have yet to get, such as, Bay Laurel, Curry Plant, Lovage, Sorrel, Chervil, French Tarragon, Lemon Grass, Lemon Verbena, Citrus Mint, just to name a few. I'll probably post my progress here because if I do well, I'll be cooking with a lot of herbs this summer!.
Yikes, it's 4 am and I have a lot of nerve still being up. Ellie is getting her first series of shots later today and I think the worrying has got me sleepless. Hopefully I won't cry when the Dr. gives her the needle. I think I'll go start some bread...
Written by Deb on March 12, 2004 04:01 AMA MurrayHill 5 Creation ©2002-06 The contents of this website and all images are © D. Byer unless indicated otherwise. All rights reserved. Please do not use images and/or content without permission and credit to this site. For more information contact: mh5deb(at)gmail(dot)com
