Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Mystery of the Dissappearing Limes and the Mysteriously Appearing Lemons

Before I left for Christmas I noticed that some of my limes were turning slightly yellow. I found this easy to explain in my head. "They need to be picked, they are too ripe." I committed myself to doing just that when I returned from vacation. So, last Saturday I went out to harvest my limes. Upon inspection of my tree I realized that all of my limes had grown to at least 150% of the normal size of limes. I thought, "How fortunate I am, my limes are huge." Then upon further inspection, I deduced that at least 95% (closer to 97.3%) of my limes were now a bright, I call it "lemony", yellow.

I was disturbed by this, because much of my reputation depends on being "The guy with the lime tree". Besides it would be embarrassing to find out that what I had been calling (and giving to my classmates) a lime for 5 months was actually an unripe lemon. This could not be. So, I decided to test my hypothesis that though my limes may be superficially transformed, they were still catagorically limes on the inside.

I cut one open and at first it smelled like lemonade, which is an inconclusive finding. I decided that I was unfit to make the judgement. I squeezed some the juice out of my lime and asked my mother-in-law to smell it. The results were shocking. She said it was lemon juice and that my lime tree was, in fact, a lemon tree. I was crushed.

Now that a week has past, though, I can finally admit that I am the owner of one of the most unique forms of life in the world - A tree that grows limes that turn into lemons!

2 comments:

Jules said...

You should get a gold star for this post because it is hilarious and awesome. My roommates enjoyed it too.

I look forward to having some lemonade at your house.

Unknown said...

I still say it is both a lemon tree and a lime tree!! Or maybe limes are lemons and it is just a big conspiracy!