Lessons from a Pot

Shortly before we moved, our friends, the Bayless', gave us an enormous and very beautiful glazed ceramic pot. This pot is big enough for a tree and must weight close to 80 lbs. Google obligingly moved it out to California with all our other stuff and on arrival we manhandled it out onto our balcony. Even before the boxes were all unpacked I went in search of the perfect occupant for this pot. I knew I wanted a citrus tree of some kind and was delighted to find a lemon tree appropriately called a "Meyer lemon". I brought it home, poured in several bags of potting soil and planted my new little tree. After studying it for a few days it's shrub-like appearance began to bother me so I took matters into my own hands and pruned it, judiciously I hoped, but with some trepidation as I have never owned a citrus tree. Now it looked more like a tree anyway.

About a month later, as if to announce to the world that it found it's new pot to its liking, the tree began to sprout flower buds. Not just a few here and there but enormous clusters of blossoms at the end of every branch I hadn't lopped off. I, of course, watched this development with growing delight but one problem niggled at my brain. Pollination. There are myriad citrus trees in yards all around us that are heavy with fruit so I knew there had to be some pollinators out there. But would they find my diminutive little tree in the sea of concrete that makes up our complex? The balcony is only 6 feet wide with a 7 foot concrete wall around it. I figured if worse came to worst, I could pollinate the blossoms with a brush but hoped that some insect would find it, even though insects are rather rare out here ("no bugs!" is the mantra of everyone who moves here from the Midwest).

I was sitting at the kitchen table sewing the other day when something on the balcony caught my eye. A beautiful green hummingbird was flitting (is there any other word to describe a hummingbird's flight?) around the lemon tree! He worked the blossoms quickly, darting from branch to branch, then zoomed away over the wall. Aha, I thought - Mother Nature wins again! I wasn't sure if a hummingbird's visit would pollinate the blossoms but it was a hopeful sign.

Yesterday I was having lunch and reading a book out on the balcony, basking in the sunshine. Mentally I was miles away in rural England but a familiar noise began to penetrate my brain and brought me back to California. I looked at the lemon tree next to me and there was a BEE! Not just one but three beautiful bees, busily working every blossom on my tree. What a welcome sight! I looked at them closely and sure enough, they were plain old honeybees, Apis mellifera. Either there are feral colonies of bees out here or someone within a few miles of here has beehives. Each little bee was wearing his yellow pollen pantaloons and now I KNOW that my blossoms have been pollinated. What joy. I could have hugged them, blessed little bees that reminded me of home.

So even amidst the concrete and asphalt with only tiny, manicured yards and no wild spots where nature is allowed to run rampant, God's creatures prevail. I'm blessed to witness it and learning to keep my eyes open for the wonder of it. Thanks for the pot that is teaching me, Tom and Tee!