Growing Gifts

We got a knock on our door yesterday afternoon, interrupting our Season 5 marathon of LOST after working in the yard all day. When we opened the door, we found a beautiful little lemon tree looking back at us! John's Uncle Bill and Aunt Ann had promised us a house-warming present of a lemon tree and found the perfect one yesterday while shopping at Home Depot.

I am absolutely thrilled. I use a lot of lemons for my cooking and baking. It will be so incredible to use our own lemons in the recipes. We even picked a spot for it in the backyard and will work over the next few weeks to landscape it. We want to make a beautiful home for our new little tree.

Bill and Ann gave us a tutorial on how to make this little beauty healthy (they have an incredible orchard in their backyard). We learned that the roots grow laterally, not deep. We only have to water it once a month in the winter! And we need to give it citrus plant food about three times a year. We can trim it if we like once it starts growing, but it won't get much bigger than six feet tall. Perfect! And, thanks to the blazing sun here in Arizona, we should paint the exposed trunk with a white latex paint until the leaves bloom out enough to protect the tree from getting sunburned. They are nursery professionals!

Until it warms up enough each night, we are presently keeping our new little buddy in the house in my ice bucket. It would die if it spent a night outside. I guess we now own something that we need to wrap on the cold nights, eh? What a generous, giving gift! We will have this tree for years to come and will enjoy the fruit it will provide.

I want to name the tree...any ideas?