Dinner last night was quite yummy. I have always wanted to make Chicken Piccata and finally did last night, using my lemons from my very own lemon tree. I’ve been giving quite a few of them away since all 30 of them ripened, at the same time but I’ve kept some for our house, as well. There is something so elemental in growing your own food and using it to flavor your life, as well as your food.
Along with my Mom, I put out a very large vegetable garden where it does require a great deal of work and often, a lot of luck, to have a good crop. This year we had an enormous crop and actually with all the rain we had, we had the garden produce a second showing, which had us scrambling to either use up the produce or give it away.
When you labor for weeks to have a cucumber or tomato grow, you feel a great sense of accomplishment and know that without your efforts, the fruit would not flourish and would die on the vine. You watch as the tiniest shoots emerge form the ground and you marvel at how quickly they grow into life-sustaining plants. It’s a natural high but with my lemon tree, all I did was watch it, for months on end with no results. Oh I watered and fertilized it but still, all 30 of the lemons that were dangling from the branches stayed green. I checked more than once to make sure that I hadn’t bought a lime tree. I even planted impatiens at the base of the tree, so that it didn’t look so bare. The impatiens did so well that they nearly covered the entire lemon tree but that was OK, since I had gotten tired of looking at the drooping branches.
I read conflicting reviews on how and when lemons ripen but I was preoccupied with weddings and parties this summer, that I didn’t investigate fully and thought, why not just be surprised. I was and am. I’ll be moving my lemon tree inside soon, so that it can survive the winter and hopefully start it’s new crop, in the spring. I’ll get to watch the blooms emerge and bring with them the tiny green fruit and it’s OK now that those green orbs stay green, for so long, because I’ll know what’s awaiting me, in the Fall.
0 Responses to “Chicken Piccata”