Scruffy

Of course Scruffy's sudden and rapid decline does raise the question; is the recent egg-eating behaviour a result of some girl-on-girl hierarchy-establishing bullying in the absence of an effective patriarch?

Several years ago, presumably some little while after a large batch of marmalade had been made, we noticed some citrus seedlings popping up in the compost heap. They were carefully removed, potted and nurtured until we had five healthy and happy little lemon trees. We would have been happier with Seville oranges because they are of such rarity here that we know only one garden on the whole island which has any, but I suspect that the seeds from the scrumped oranges had been marmalised* to death.

Be that as it may, two of the seedlings must have been given away while three were planted here and we watched and waited for lemons. The trees grew tall and healthy and made the shop-bought one we had had for years look like a runty poor-relation, but did they flower? Did they fruit? No, not a bit of it - they were healthy, but barren.

We had hoped to get Nikos Drosakis to graft other citrus varieties onto these healthy plants but he died before the opportunity arose. And then last winter we had an incredible amount of snow which did awful things to lemon trees as well as to bougainvillea all over the island. So last week at the garden centre when Spousie was buying some new fruit trees, he ordered another lemon to replace the old shop-bought one that had begun to look more like a destitute relation than just a poor one.

Planting the new apricot, peach and nectarine yesterday, Spousie noticed that the old lemon was beginning to show signs of recovery, so where to plant the new lemon on order? I suggested it replace the barren one by the back door. I could dig out the existing one and in the process, bury dear old Scruffy. So that is what I did today.

* The English word 'marmalade', meaning jam made from citrus fruit, is closely related to the Greek word, 'marmelada' meaning jam made from any kind of fruit. The origin comes from the first fruit preserve ever made, which was quince cheese made in Portugal, where the word for quince is marmelo. I do not know why English uses the letter 'a' in the second vowel position when clearly it should be 'e'.
- The verb 'to marmalise' was created by English funny person Ken Dodd meaning to 'smash a person into the ground'. It is found more often on the internet as 'marmelise' but given that Ken Dodd was English and the English misspell the root word, I have stuck with Mr Dodd's misspelled original.