A Singaporean In Australia

I took this picture at eye level, showing plenty of fruits

Picked up 2 freshly dropped ones

"When Life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

It is a great quote to remind us to make the best out of a bad situation we may encounter in life. It's a pity the creator used lemons as a metaphor to represent the 'sour life experience'. He could have used really hateful food such as ladies fingers or brinjal. I love lemons. It is one of the best fruits ever created. It tastes well with any food you add to and it tastes great by itself. I guess you can't please everyone.

Life literally gave me lemons today and I was really quite pleased about it. The tree was at the side of the road. If someone owned it, he could not be bothered with it nor the fruits growing as the ground was littered with unwanted ripe lemons. That wasn't the first time I experienced this. Oranges, lemons, raspberries, herbs, spices, you name it. Oddly enough, these lemons are going for more than 50 cents each at supermarkets by loads so obviously people rather buy these off the shelves than to pick some for free. Eugene for example, have a huge bush of Rosemary, so huge that it could last him a lifetime of consumption, outside his house but I saw a bottle of dried Rosemary he bought from shop. I can't figure the mentality of people here at times.

I've came up with a crazy ambition.

I want to get my own place in future, select seasonal fruit trees to create a neat rotational harvest system so that I can get fruits everyday at any time of the year. Lemons will be on top of the list. It isn't a huge tree. You can get plenty of fruits for a small one barely 2m tall and there will never be worries if your tree produces sweet-enough fruits. I'll grow grapes as well, seeing how Uncle Lai did his own 'grapes web' at his backyard. It's a beautiful creeper even when the plant isn't fruiting. Of course no one leaves out useful plants such as Chilli and Tomato, so shouldn't I.

Herbs and spices don't take up much space and I'll reserve a small collection in a corner of my garden with those I use for cooking such as Rosemary, Oregano, Sweet Basil, Curry leaves, Pepper, Chocolate Mint, Thyme, etc. Finally, I'll spam the rest of the gardens with common veggies. It is probably not enough to make me self sufficient with veggies because obviously I'm too poor to afford a huge land but I'm sure it is achievable with fruits and herbs.

Back to the Lemon Tree along the road, I picked 2 of the freshly dropped ones after visiting the hospital with Jen to check the baby, tucked her in bed once more and made lemonade. Though small, they were so juicy that I extracted enough juice from just one fruit that I normally needed two to make the volume.  A satisfying huge glass of Lemon Cola consumed just as I finished this post.

I saved the other Lemon for tomorrow.