2004-07-06

book the other day. There were a couple of parts that had me laughing so hard I could barely breathe – especially the line “I see you have a little swimming mouse”. My favorite stories are the ones that he writes about his family. After I finished the David Sedaris book, I started The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and as much as I wanted to like it – Fred enjoyed it a great deal when he read it – I realized around page 150 that I just didn’t care what happened to the characters and, y’know, life’s just too damn short. Yesterday morning I started The Da Vinci Code. I’m about 250 pages into it (I read in bed after Fred went to his room, and couldn’t put it down – thus the reason I was up past midnight last night), and enjoying it a great deal so far. We watched a bunch of movies this weekend, the best one being The Pianist. What a downer of a movie. Of course, now that I know the movie’s based on the book, I’ll have to be sure to add the book to my wish list.

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Pet store kitty pics from yesterday are here.
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So, Fred’s father has a small lemon tree. It’s planted in a big pot, and he keeps it outside for the summer, and then when the weather gets cold, he pulls the pot into his garage, where it stays for the winter. Ever since last summer, when Fred’s father gave Fred a lemon from the tree and Fred declared it the Best Lemon Ever, we’ve been looking for a lemon tree. We tried all the area nurseries, we looked online to see if we could order a lemon tree, we bitched and moaned about the lack of lemon trees in this area, and then we forgot about it for a little while, and made do with lemons from the grocery store (Fred likes fresh lemon juice in his iced tea). A few months back, when we were driving to Memphis with Fred’s mother, we somehow got on the subject of lemons and lemon trees. “We just can’t find one anywhere!” Fred said sadly. “And I would really like a lemon tree of my own.” We all sat in silence and mourned the lack of a lemon tree in our life. “Did you check the (something or other) Nursery?” Fred’s mother asked. “Yeah, we checked there,” Fred said. “And the (something) Nursery?” “Yeah.” Long, long silence. “Well,” Fred’s mother said tentatively. “You could always just plant some seeds from a lemon…” Fred and I glanced at her and then at each other. “Plant seeds from a lemon?” I said. “Yes, seeds from a lemon. To grow a lemon tree.” Fred quickly changed the subject. Later that night, while we were laying in bed talking, he brought it up. “Plant seeds from a lemon,” he said. “To grow a lemon tree.” “Can you really do that?” I asked. “The time the lemon spent in the refrigerator doesn’t ruin the seeds or something?” He shrugged. “Fuck if I know.” “Well, it won’t hurt to try, huh?” I said. “We have potting soil, and lemon seeds from your lemons. Let’s give it a try!” Some days later, I poked holes in the bottom of an empty, clean yogurt container, filled it with soil, and planted a couple of seeds from a lemon. Then I put the container on the front step and waited. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen,” I said two weeks later. “Surely it doesn’t take THIS long for a lemon seed to sprout.” Fred agreed. But since we are who we are, neither of us got around to moving the container off the front step, and a week later after I went out to get the mail, I glanced down and saw it. Our lemon seeds had sprouted! You can plant seeds from a lemon and eventually end up with a lemon tree. Who the fuck knew? (Yes, it’ll probably be 50 years before we actually GET a lemon off the lemon tree, but that’s not the POINT.) Next, we’re going to try our hand at growing a peach tree. By the time the spud has graduated from high school and we’ve found a house we like on many, many acres, both the lemon and peach trees should be ready to plant in the ground. Just call me Farmer Robyn.
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Yesterday I finally downloaded and installed Firefox. Fred’s been using it for a couple of weeks now and really, really likes it a lot. I like it so far, too – especially the popup stopper extension you can install – but I’m having a problem with Eudora. Even though Firefox is set as my default browser, if I click on a link in an email, it comes up in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Fred tried to figure out what the problem was and couldn’t, so I threw myself on the mercy of Eudora support. Their response? It’s a Firefox problem. Smells like bullshit to me. So if I’m on your notify list and you see me leave, don’t worry. I’m switching all my notify email to a gmail account. Which doesn’t really solve the problem with Eudora, but 9/10 of the links I get are in notify emails, so it’ll be easier to deal with. Stupid Eudora.
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Bath time!]]>

18 thoughts on “2004-07-06”

  1. FYI-you will need 2 fruit trees to produce fruit. A male and female. The bees have to pollenate one to another. Good luck finding them in your area. When I visit friends in CA, I am envious of the fruit and take huge sacks home with me full of fruit.

  2. The Da Vinci Code is good all the way through. I suggest you add Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons to your wish list as well. It was actually done before Da Vinci Code and is equally as intriguing.
    One question about the planting of lemon seeds…if you plant seeds from a substandard lemon, say one from the grocery store, will the lemons you get in 50 years be inferior? I would hate to see that happen, Farmer Robyn. Maybe you should use seeds from Fred’s Dads’ lemons. I am very excited to see how it all turns out, including the peaches!

  3. Just an FYI I came across and thought of Mr Boogers.. When a human OR animal yawn incessantly it is a sign their body needs oxygen. Im wondering if the little gray boog-about isnt getting enough oxygen? Just a thought.

  4. For the record, you don’t need two trees. 🙂
    William Johnson, Galveston County Extension Horticulturist, says (in answer to the question of whether or not two trees are needed): “The grower definitely does not need a “male lemon tree” as citrus trees do not have female & male plants as some types of plants do. Citrus have “perfect” flowers, meaning that flowers have both stamens, which produce pollen, and pistils, which develop into fruit, in the same blossom. While a few types of citrus (certain cultivars of grapefruits, for example), benefit from cross pollination, most types and varieties of citrus are sself-fruiting — including lemons*and a grower needs only one tree. While honeybees are strongly attracted to citrus flowers, they are not required for pollination. However, some studies have shown that some citrus will produce more fruit when cross pollinated by bees.”

  5. I agree with Lori use seeds from freds dads lemons. Also you should Germinate the seeds first. make a small cut in the seeds outer layer, place it in a ziplock with a wet paper towel and keep it in the sun. try to keep the paper towel wet it should only take a week or so before you see a sprout. Then plant it, that should work for you, i done it from seeds from my familys lemo trees in florida i now get lemons the size of grapefruits.

  6. Lemon tree, very pretty,
    and the lemon flower is sweet,
    but the fruit of the lemon
    is impossible to eat.
    (I have that stuck in my head, thanks to your entry. Not your fault, I suppose, that my brain dredges up music to go with your entries.)

  7. My mom grew a tree from her favorite apple seed. She had apples in only a couple of years (2 or 3). Unfortunately, when she told the guy at the orchard she was growing a tree, he told her that her tree needed to be cross pollunated with a different variety to make “her” apple. She was bummed and cut down the tree. 🙁 Good luck on your lemon tree. I also like fresh lemon in my iced tea.

  8. I had that problem with Eudora and Mozilla (I use the regular Mozilla broswer, not Firefox), but only once in a while. Sometimes the link would open in both browsers, but not usually. For some reason it only happened with HTML emails.
    I ended up giving up on Eudora, though – it was driving me completely insane what with claiming I was blocking the ad window (I was using it in sponsored mode) when I wasn’t and just generally being slow and a pain in the ass. Oh, and the mailbox weirdness. I had two In boxes for months, and I was afraid all hell would break loose if I deleted the duplicate one.
    Mozilla Mail (which comes with the full Mozilla suite) or Thunderbird (standalone mailer) make a good alternative, especially since they support multiple email accounts and have junk filtering now. Took me a few days to get used to doing things differently, but it’s such a relief not to be doing battle with Eudora on a daily basis.

  9. Robyn – is there a good web site that lists all the books in a series? I always have a hard time finding this out.
    Thanks, Christy

  10. I understand also that if you swallow a watermelon seed, it will grow a watermelon tree in your stomach. Watch out for that.

  11. I would send you a lemon tree if I could, but I think there are laws about transporting fruit trees across state lines, or something. I grew up with a tiny suburban lot packed with citrus trees my grandfather grew. Damn if I learned anything about their care, though, sorry. Just pitched kumquats at each other and over the roof as kids 🙂
    I started using Firefox a couple months ago, I liked it and it is fast. But MSIE was just more familiar (after years and years of using Netscape), and I was too lazy to get used to it. Until a couple days ago, I was suddenly *flooded* with popups – despite having 2 stoppers and Search and Destroy, and carefully combing my system. Then the announcement there’s a robot? virus? something in the popups that can read keystrokes, such as logons and passwords. So, since Monday, Firefox is THE browser here. It doesn’t have the “intuitive” typing thing, trying to find bookmarks is just weird, and the text won’t stay enlarged after I do it 80 hundred times. My son also informs me it doesn’t support sound – hmm. Perhaps uninstalled plugins. But it’s fast as hell, and no big problems opening anything yet, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the logon ‘memory’, something IE gave up a couple versions ago. Anyway, good luck with the lemon tree, maybe I’ll get brave enough to plant the Naval Orange tree I wanted to 🙂

  12. Ahhhh, a house with many, many acres with a peach and lemon tree! Sounds like heaven. Oh, and maybe some apples trees, weeping willows, a picket fence, and dogs and cats. Pure heaven on earth. God, just thinking about that make me sad about where I presently rent. Reminds me of a song: “Our house, is a very,very,very fine house, with two cats in the yard, life use to be so hard, now everything is easy because of you”! Maybe one day 🙂

  13. I know what you mean about Kavalier and Clay. I read it, and I mostly liked it, but it was slow going. And let me tell you, if you couldn’t get into Kavalier and Clay, don’t even think about reading White Teeth (by Zadie Smith). Ugh.

  14. I think the question would be whether or not the lemon tree that produced the lemon you got the seed from was a hybrid. As I recall from botany class, if you plant a seed from a hybrid plant, you get some sort of weird throwback, and the fruit tastes different. However, it would still be pretty!

  15. Kudos on making the switch to Firefox. I LOVE that browser – I’ve been using it for ages now. I couldn’t live without my tabbed browsing, give that a try if you haven’t already, it’s the best thing ever. And I can highly recommend Thunderbird as well. Oh yeah – there is something called a ‘user agent switcher’ that you can use to make web sites think you’re running IE so they don’t deny you entry. There are also oodles of extensions you can use to customize your Firefox – like calendar’s and such.

  16. Get a Meyer lemon tree, if you can, they’re the BEST- huge juciy-tart lemons. We have two, which my father-in-law takes care of for me since we live in an apartment complex and have no yard. Here in New Orleans the climate is perfect for it. I’d think your climate would be similar there. You can get trees delivered from some gift websites (I think I saw some in Red Envelope’s catalog), but they’re usually pricy. Good luck, though with your home-grown seeds! I love doing that, try an avacado- it takes forever for it to sprout but eventually it wll.

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