Lovely Awkward: A Year of Wine, Romance and Life Among the French

Lovely Awkward: A Year of Wine, Romance and Life Among the French

Thursday 4 October 2012

The mandarin tree is dead!

When we went to Canada for our several-month trip in the spring and summer, we left our beloved mandarin tree with a security guard in a building near us. Unfortunately, we didn't think about the fact that security guards, especially in France, often take holidays in the summer.

So, when we came back from Canada, here's the state that we found our mandarin tree in:

Our poor, dead mandarin tree.

The death of the tree didn't make me nearly as sad as the death of the little baby tree that had appeared beneath it around the time of our baby's birth. I'd sort of hoped that our baby would be able to pick fruit from that little tree for his whole life, once he got passed mashed pees and carrots, but that's not going to happen anymore. So sad.

On a happier note, we've now replaced the tree with some lovely flowers -- Bougainvillea. They grow on balconies, walls and fences all over this part of France. Our French neighbour gave them to the Professor with this little bit of advice to keep them alive, "These flowers are like a woman. If you're too nice to them, they won't stay beautiful."

He was joking, mostly, I'm sure, but we're determined to play hard to get.

For the baby's first birthday, I'm thinking lemon tree. Or kiwi (apparently you need both a male and female plant). Fig?


Our new Bougainvillea plants.



2 comments:

  1. Ah, these things happen. I'm really not good at growing things, I pretty much stopped now.

    Well, except for the baby in my belly, of course ;-)

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