(Pruned for pleasure alone)
Simon exists in a permanent state of proudness. No one else in the neighbourhood has quite so dashing a lemon tree as he. Simon’s lemon tree stands head and shoulders above any of the other vegetation in the neighbourhood.
“The local flora really has to pick its game up.” Simon is telling his mother on the phone.
The perfectly pruned lemon tree living at Simon’s abode was planted over ten years back, by Simon himself. It stands in the back left corner of his property. That corner was actually the selling point of the house for Simon, for once he locked his eyes on that special meeting of two walls, he instantly saw its potential.
“The spot has an ideal mixture of sun and shade.” This is the mantra that all of the neighbourhood’s residents can repeat word for word because of Simon’s gushings about the tree.
His LEMON tree.
The odd part about this whole situation is that Simon never uses lemons in any of his culinary adventures, and he can’t stand the colour yellow. Whenever the tree sprouts so much as a shade of yellow, Simon is down amongst the branches, pruning away furiously.
“You’re killing me here mate!” Lemon trees cannot speak, no matter how much they may try to. A sobering, and at times disheartening, thought for Simon. He just knows he would be great friends with his grand old tree.
“Why? Why? WHY a lemon tree?” Is all his next door neighbour can say as he delivers yet another Woolworths plastic packet full to the bursting with lemons.
“Oh Gerty, you do always say the damnedest things. Ok well see you next month!” Simon throws the last words over his shoulder as he walks back to his house. It is a short walk, he was only next door.
Simon is in his room again. The room has a perfectly positioned window that looks out into the garden. He is looking rather intently at his recently pruned tree again.
“Green, just as all lemon trees should be.” He sighs in contentment.
It is time for Simon’s nap, and so, lying back on his bed, he looks straight up at the ceiling. There is a poster on the ceiling directly above his bed. This comes as no shock to Simon because he was the one who put it up there in the first place. The poster is his oldest possession. He got it when he was 11 from a Terminator 2 convention. Arnold had been there in the flesh. It had been the best day of Simon’s young life.
As Simon’s eyes slowly started to slide shut, he worked, as always, to fix the poster’s imagery in his mind; The mighty Terminator Arnold Schwarz standing foreground, dual wielding shotguns, and just over his left shoulder, in the background stands a slight, almost unnoticeable little tree. It looks somewhat like a lemon tree without the lemons on its branches.