I have always had a ‘thing’ about lemon trees and lemons in general. Call it a warm & fuzzy feeling, a love, a passion, or even an obsession, but to put it simply, just looking at lemons makes me feel happy.

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Maybe it’s their vibrant, yellow colour or the way they grow so plentifully here in Italy. Certainly where we live on the Aeolian island of Salina (about as far south as you can go in Italy and still call yourself Italian) this evergreen citrus tree thrives. Like a true Italian, I admit that I also have a healthy obsession for food. Perhaps I subconsciously associate the lemon with many of the great culinary dishes we have here in Italy and around the world for that matter. Have I mentioned the word ‘limoncello’ yet ?

When Santino (my husband) and I bought our house here on Salina in 2011, even I must admit it had nothing much going for it. He called it a ‘un luculo di cimitero’ (burial niche) as it was pretty dark and dingy inside and would take lots of imagination, time and Euros to make it habitable. His son Roberto had the imagination (bless him), we had the time, and no-one had the money!

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What it did have in its favour though was the original kitchen with the old wood fired ovens. BUT the real deal clincher was the two magnificent lemon trees in the back garden.

There was the crazy suggestion that we should cut down these two lemon trees in order to have better sea views, but naturally this was never an option for us. The lemon trees were close to the house itself and all you had to do was go to the outdoor terrazzo to be rewarded with the wonderful sea views without uprooting anything.

Our lemon trees are called lunare lemons which means every month according to the phase of the moon they flower ( zagara) and grow new fruit. There is hardly a time that these trees are not covered with lemons.

An Australian friend of mine living in Sydney once asked me what it felt like to be rich. Well, she had seen a photo of the glut of lemons on our trees and told me that at her local fruit & veggie shop one lemon was selling for over $2.00!

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This abundance of lemons on our two trees did create a dilemma initially. What to do with them all? Coming from a Scottish background it went against the grain to see so many of them lying and rotting on the ground. We could give some away, but most people on the island already had their own homegrown supply.

I spent hours goggling lemons and the different ways you could make use of them. So began the daily ritual of drinking a squeezed lemon first thing in the morning with hot water, the lemon butter manufacture, the preserved lemon for using in many dishes such as our Moroccan chicken dish, filling up bottles with homemade limoncello, using lemons to wash the dishes, the juice as a cleaning and freshening agent. Recipe, after recipe, after recipe!

Basta. Enough.

The lemon is also one of my favourite subjects to photograph. Using different lighting and angles, the possibilities are endless.

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One day there was great excitement (well at least for me) when Santino discovered an unusual shaped lemon growing on our tree. I got great mileage out of this lemon and not only photographed it to death but also wrote a story about it. This will be in my next blog.

I’ll also write about how thousands of people would have seen our lemon trees on the TV.

The subsequent blog will have the story about our lemon trees and our home birth here on the island of Salina.

Right now though as we are all battling this coronavirus war, my lemon trees are still heavily laden with fruit. A sign that life is continuing, even if we are temporarily banned from enjoying it.

This morning when I woke up it was raining and cold here on Salina. As usual, I went outside and took some photos of my lemon trees.

It did make me happy.

Stay safe everyone.
Libby