I wouldn't exactly call mine a "green" thumb

When we first moved here, a friend of mine who will remain nameless (but seriously Jay you know it's you, right?) told me that the great thing about living in California is that you could plant absolutely anything in the ground and it would grow beautifully. I tried to explain to him that even my silk plants die, but he assured me that now that I was living here everything would be different and everything I touched would be a stunning shade of green.

So, full of excitement over the fact that I was finally going to get to nurture a plant to life, I planted my first lemon tree. I was SO excited!! I even named it 'Larry'! Larry and I had some great times.....we talked on a daily basis, I shared my deepest secrets with Larry and Larry shared his deepest secrets with me.....it was beautiful. We had coffee together in the mornings, we read books together, we laughed as we talked about how good looking Brad and Angelina are... we bonded. Then one day I noticed that Larry was looking a little under the weather. Larry and I prayed together that day. The next day I noticed that Larry's leaves were starting to fall off....I cried a little. Over the course of the next few weeks I stood by helplessly as Larry gave in and lost his battle. I held his little stick dry branches and told him it was okay, he could let go...go into the light...I'd be okay. But I wasn't really okay, I was tremendously sad. How in the world did I kill Larry in a State where just by virtue of the weather and the sunshine no one ever kills a plant without a hired hit man getting involved?? I mourned Larry......I even left his pot sitting empty as a shrine to him.

RIP Larry the Lemon Tree

I am so sorry that I sucked at keeping you alive.

You deserved better!

Then today I had a moment of thinking that maybe I wasn't so bad after all. I went to take the trash out and saw that the orange tree in our yard was finally ready to be picked. Granted, there were only a few oranges on it, but they looked great! Granted (again), I didn't actually plant the orange tree....it was here when we moved in, but still it could have committed suicide when it saw what I did to poor Larry, but it didn't. It could have been jealous that I never took the time to come up with a name for it and decided that it would show me by just letting it's oranges turn brown and then throwing them at me as I walked by, but it didn't. God bless that little orange tree...it actually gave me a few beautiful oranges! It restored my faith. It made me think that maybe I would forgive my friend for setting me up for failure.

Oh sure, there were only like 5 oranges, but they were MY oranges from a tree in MY yard that I didn't kill just by being in a 5 mile radius of it! I was SO excited......until I looked next door and saw this......