Morning Stories: My little lemon tree

and the resilience of nature

Resilience is on my mind. Maybe because of my little lemon tree. It’s there, just in front of me while I’m sitting at my desk and it makes me smile today, although I was almost in tears while looking at it a few weeks ago. Because I’ve killed it, or at least I thought I’ve killed it. One day, after a few days of absence caused by pain, I came to my room and it was all dried out and looking very sad. Seeing it like this broke my heart. I was growing it from a seed and it gave me so much pleasure. This day I gave it water anyway, refusing to give up on it. I saw things in the garden seemingly dead springing back to life in the next season, so I thought I’ll try with my lemon tree too and see if there’s still some life in it.

And it rewarded me a couple of weeks later with a few new leaves. You should see me doing a little happy dance when I saw it. My little lemon tree was alive!

And a couple of weeks later I’ve cut off all the dry parts and it looks almost like its old self. I’m amazed how a little tree, grown from a seed can rebuilt itself in a matter of weeks.

It reminds me of our trip to Sequoia National Park a few years ago and the story I’ve read about those beautiful giants. Sequoias need to burn in order to reseed. And then they restore themselves from the fire and often are even stronger afterwards. The resilience of nature will never stop to amaze me.

I’m sure there’s some life lesson in this, but I’ll just leave it to you to find it if you need it.