Could it look any sourer? Short of a feather doona and magnum of champagne, this Meyer lemon was given everything a Meyer lemon could want – including a bloke who drank too much beer – but is it going to survive? Of course not. Photo: Sally Hopman.
Spring has sprung and all I can say is, I’m done.
I’m done with this gardening stuff. Trying to grow things in dirt. The only thing I like about the word is that it’s so onomatopoeic – it sounds like what it is. Nasty. Full of squirmy stuff that thrives in squalor.
It started out quite well. My two favourite girls, Daphne and Rosemary, I knew wouldn’t let me down. I’ve been growing them for years, in pots mainly. Because I mostly try to raise them in memory of loved ones lost, I keep them mobile in pots so they can follow me about.
I’d been in this place for a while and because Rosemary, Daphne and I were getting a little overwhelmed by the increasing number of people we had to remember, I ripped them out and tossed them into a pile of, yes, dirt, on one side of the house where nothing has ever grown. They thrived.
Today, Rosemary and Daphne are being good girls, as long as I leave them alone and don’t try to garden them. We’ve grown apart – and they seem to like it that way.
On the remaining side of the yard, where two glorious oaks once swayed menacingly closer to the house with every slight breeze, there is now absolutely nothing. One of the trees was brought down partially in a storm, the other had no choice when this monster of a red piece of machinery bulldozed its way in one morning. By lunchtime, it looked like a takeaway food shop – well mainly chips.
Because I know stuff grows on the outskirts of the property – apples, figs, apricots, pears – a real orchard of a place as long as I don’t go near it, and definitely never with a basket until the fruit has given up and is lying motionless on the ground – I thought I’d brave the elements and plant a, wait for it, tree. In the ground, no less. No pot for this little sucker.
A lemon tree, I thought. How many times have you heard that Meyer lemons grow everywhere. Or that they need very little to thrive – except a close relationship with a man who likes to drink lots of beer.
Ripped out of pots and chucked into the “garden”, Rosemary and Daphne show you what they’re made of – dirt. Photo: Sally Hopman.
I can do this, I thought. I’ve got all the dirt on this dirt. I know what gives it the pip, when to leaf it alone. So I waited until it rained, the dog, with a little help from me, dug a hole that almost reached China’s outlying suburbs, and we plonked the tree in said hole and filled it with potting mix that cost almost as much as a Canberra stadium.
A couple of days of rain watered it in, I ignored it, perfect. Until yesterday, that was. I looked out the window. Most of the tree was gone, except for, helpfully, the label that told you what it was.
Meyer God? Was that really a lemon tree?
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