Margarita tree

One summer day when Jacquie and I stretched our beach afternoon into a beach night by heading over to Wonderland for drinks and dinner, we made a few new friends. Duh.

We had lots of laughs about who knows what with Colby and his group of friends.

Aw, Colby wants to give Jackee a pre-fireball kiss!

Actually, I remember most all of the who knows what that we laughed about, and one of those things was the margarita tree in my back yard.

A margarita tree you may ask? What is that, and how do I get one? Well, full disclosure, it's  a simple lime tree, but, seeing as the only proper way to make a margarita is to squeeze lots of fresh limes and then add good Tequila and Cointreau, the tree in the back yard gets you about a third of the way there. And really, what else are you going to do with a tree full of limes?

Out of the 5 fruit trees in my new back yard, I was most excited about the lime tree. (Mostly for the reason sated above.)

Me and my girls and my mom first tried the limes on mother's day. Delicious! The whole family was excited about the margarita tree.

They looked JUST like this on mother's day, only smaller and rounder.

But, um, this is what my margarita tree looks like now:

Uh, hello? What are those yellow fruits?!

Here's a close-up:

So, apparently, I don't have a margarita tree! I have a lemon drop tree. (You win, Jacquie!)

Perhaps not every person would mix up immature lemons for limes, but I did.

Regardless of my agricultural Irish roots, I'm no farmer. I'm not even a gardener. I like the concept of gardening, of growing my own food. I like it a lot. I'd like to garden. I plan to garden. But I've not really got down to the business of actually gardening yet.

So when I got the email below, with the subject line of "summer fruit" from the woman from whom I bought the house last week,

hi .. i hope you are enjoying the plums and figs now.. both of those trees have provided tons of great fruit for the past many years...

I replied with what I thought was a kind and generous offer to come get some of the fruit if she'd like.

Well, she took me up on it, the very next day. And THIS is the email I got back from her:

thanks for the offer beth... we were in the neighborhood this afternoon and drove by the alley... can't see any plums and not many figs (mostly overripe) -- that's sad.... what do you think happened?.. maybe you'll be able to bring them back to health for next summer because they really bear some excellent fruit!

Wtf? Are you bitching at my because the fruit in MY back yard, which I offered to you to be nice, is not up to your standards?

I think what happened, lady, is that you moved out last winter, the house stood empty for months, and then you sold it to the offspring of Irish farmers who does not garden! Who, in fact, does not know the difference between a lemon and a lime tree!!

Her next email, in reply to my reply, which I tried to keep friendly but detached, was this:

would you have any interest in having us remove the planter beds in the back yard and their soil?  (only if you have no interest in using them...)... let me know and if so, john will make arrangements (at your convenience) to do so... If you can use them or expect to, of course they ARE yours!

Well thank you, thank you very much for the kind offer, but I'm planning on keeping them. And you know what the first think I'm going to grow in one those planter beds?? A dwarf lime tree! A teeny tiny lime tree, with delicious teeny tiny limes, for giant margaritas.

Unless, of course, the plum tree goes and dies, then I'll rip it out and plant a proper, full-size margarita tree!