Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Lemon tree, very pretty..

and the fruit of the poor lemon makes a wonderful toy.

We have a lovely old lemon tree in our backyard. It languished for many years, squeaking out an existence on the stray water that leaked from our garden plumbing, but when we landscaped our tiny city oasis last year it was honored with a good pruning, some fertilizer and its own sprinkler, and it is now gratefully delivering fruit.

The bay area is chillier than usual for this time of year, but still warm enough to go out to play, in my English opinion. This weekend I hustled the antsy kids out to play in the dilute afternoon sun.

Geekydaddy got me a lovely new camera for Christmas (a Canon SX20IS), so I was experimenting with it, trying to capture the crisp loveliness of my favorite plants (not too tricky), and those elusive moments when a fleeting facial expression on one of my tiny ones takes my breath away (harder!).

Geekygirl noticed the lemons, and asked to pick some. The lemons were first tested for flight potential, and for use in soccer. Then they became puppies. Then mermaids. Thus began almost two hours of "imaginary play with lemons" I'll let my pictures tell the rest of the story.

The lemons

Lemon as ballistic object


Lemon as evil pirate who must be ejected from the ship/play structure


Lemon as fearsome monster (Geekygirl has elicited genuine fear from Geekyboy, I think)


Ultimately the lemon was required  to take a time out.


Remind me again why I buy them toys?!

7 comments:

followthatdog said...

Hilarious. our boys have tons of bath toys, but their favorites are ziplock baggies and the empty shampoo bottles.
Great photos too.

A Modern Mother said...

My parents have a lemon tree and when we visit the girls love them ... but to make lemonade. To me the smell of lemon on my hands is California.

Jen Walshaw said...

Lucky you with the camera and lemons. Like the images. Isnt it wonderful when their imagination just runs wild. Everything is something on Star Wars for my little ones or should that be Jango and Douku

Emma Davies said...

I love the effect on these pictures. Some kind of colour filter? What software? I have not invested in photoshop but so far found that paintshoppro does everything I want....wonder if I need to upgrade?

Calif Lorna said...

I love that the UK is hidden under a blanket of snow and in California, we're harvesting lemons!

Lovely photos, they look like they're having so much fun.

geekymummy said...

Thanks All. MM, I keep meaning to make lemonade! Emma, It is a setting on the camera, but you can do similar in photoshop, MH, I am so grateful for the camera, it is a lot of fun, CL, totally, I love and miss the UK, but something keeps us here....!

Iota said...

How lovely to have a lemon tree.

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