When I was just a lad of ten, my father said to me,
“Come here and take a lesson from the lovely lemon tree.”
“Don’t put your faith in love, my boy”, my father said to me,
“I fear you’ll find that love is like the lovely lemon tree.”

Prophetically sad, salient-to-young-love, written and sung a little ahead of my time

By Peter, Paul, and Mary.

We have a Meyer lemon in our backyard, by PJ, Nature, and Larry.

While it’s sweet, it is miniature, so it cannot be climbed.

Gradually, with its overtime bounty, the tree developed a gimp, a list toward our home,

Seeking its warmth and love, perhaps, proving its worth to some.

What to do, but hand-craft a winch, to reach it upright to its prime.

We had nothing to lose but a tree – besides we were wistful for a lime.

Like everything else that my husband touches, the tree has thrived.

With him, it knows – as I do – that it’s great to be alive! The Tree of Life.

P.S. The clever inventor and peaceable man who designed this winch solution for our tree is coming to visit from Ohio. He and his ‘Sweet Sue’ wife – friends forever years – were here with us in March and return for my ‘official’ book launch for STASHES in October. Sue, who works at a bookstore and reads voraciously, has declared me her new favorite author.

Yeah, friends – our taste for each other will never sour.