posts tagged with 'houseplants'
drinking houseplants
As I mentioned before I've had houseplants for a long time—longer than I had a house, indeed—but the ornamentals aren't doing as well as they were at the time of last writing. The ficus took some damage over the summer, and I let the peace lily expire peacefully rather than giving it a new pot and some actual dirt. But they've been replaced by a couple other plants with some pretense of usefulness, most notably my lime tree, a gift from my parents for my birthday this past March. It's great!
It was flowering when I got it and lots more blooms appeared in the spring, and they smelled wonderfully as the spring sun warmed up the house. Then I took it outside for the summer and all the little limes grew and grew, and the first few started to ripen. It's been back inside for probably a month now, and is heavy with ripe or almost ripe limes, and to me ripe limes means only one thing: gin and tonics! (Well, I'd do some salsa too, but all the other salsa ingredients are done with; maybe next year they'll sync up better.)
This particular lime ripens to orange, and each fruit is quite small: the biggest are under two inches in diameter and the smaller ones more like three quarters of an inch. Cut, they smell like mandarin oranges or clementines but are quite sour; mostly lime-like, with a little hint of sour orange. The juice is orange too, so in a clear cocktail they color the whole very nicely. I have to say, it's entirely delightful to be able to pick—and drink!—my own limes in November. Thanks, mom, for the tree! If anyone wants to join me for a drink stop by: there are plenty more limes to pick. I just need to get some more tonic...