My Lime Tree

My lime tree

Lime has multiple uses. You can make a rejuvenating drink with a little bit of its juice. A few drops of the juice can flavour your tea delightfully and ease your belly too. Even the otherwise bland dishes or the daal curry can undergo a miraculous metamorphosis with a touch of lime. You can use a slice of the fruit to deodorise your plate or your hands.

   When the hybrid plant seller came last year with a variety of saplings, I picked up a few including a lime. The lime was a little slow to get to like me. I watered it regularly and fed it with liberal scoops of cow dung and occasional pinches of Ammonium Phosphate Sulphate.

   “Hybrid plants take their sweet time to get used to new soil and environment,” my friend consoled me. “But once they do, they flourish.”

   He was right. After months of my patient waiting and tender care, my lime tree began to grow. But the main stem grew up aslant at an angle of 45^o. It looked nice to see but I was worried it wouldn’t grow much that way though it was bearing an occasional fruit.

 

A fruit on my little lime

   “It’s because of the shade,” said my friend. “It’s seeking direct sunlight.”

   That’s one thing about plants: they hate to stand in somebody else’s shadow and seek their own place in the light. “Let’s clear that shade,” I told my friend. The trees that produced the shade were in the wrong place anyway. So we felled them. What did the lime do then?

   Instead of straightening up, it sprouted a number of new shoots all of which began to grow straight up giving the lime an entirely new elegant look. I stand beside that little tree almost every evening admiring its exotic beauty.

 

My strawberry guava

   By the side of the lime, I had also planted a strawberry guava at the same time. The guava grew up normally without seeking angles because it was getting all the sun it needed. But it has shown no sign of bearing any fruit yet. A few days back some red ants appeared on it. Red ants are the ideal natural pesticides. They eat up pests. Today I saw the ants make their home among the guava leaves. I gave myself the hope that the ants are foresighted: they must have seen the imminent growth of fruits on that little tree, fruits that will invite pests which in turn will become fodder for the ants. Nature has its own marvels. Marvel is a heavenly feeling.

 

Red ants have gone to sleep in that little nest