The Citrus Tree

I'm going to tell an embarrassing story.

You know how I like to rescue plants, right? I often see houseplants in someone's trash bin or yard waste bag and I bring them home and adopt them. We've obtained a whole jungle full of plants that way.

Well, the other day, I took things a step too far.

A little citrus tree was sitting in a pot in the hedge of an apartment building down the street. It didn't seem to be attached to any particular apartment -- it was in the general green space around the building. I've had my eye on it for a while, wondering what its erstwhile owner would do when the weather got cold. (Citrus trees can tolerate a light freeze but anything else will damage or kill them.)

Basically, the owner did nothing. And last Thursday, when we were supposed to get freezing temperatures that night, I impulsively reached into the hedge, extracted the citrus tree and brought it home. This occasioned much hilarity from Dave, who went around telling everyone I was a plant thief.

For the next three nights, when we had heavy frost, I kept the tree indoors by our dining room window. But I hadn't really thought any of this through -- I was simply trying to protect it. What should happen next?

I could have just kept the tree. I am 98 percent sure no one would ever miss it. But I also knew if I did that, I'd feel guilty every time I looked at it. I had stolen it. Let's be honest.

I tried to knock on the door of the ground-floor apartment and tell them that I had the tree. I thought there was a good chance they might give it to me, or at least point me to the correct owner. But no one answered the door the few times I knocked.

Or, once the immediate danger of a freeze had passed, I could return the tree.

I stewed about this quandary. I hated to put the tree back where it would almost certainly be damaged if not die when temperatures dropped again, but there was a chance -- a tiny, tiny chance -- that its owner was actually missing it. Why did I assume that same owner wasn't capable of protecting it themselves? After all, it looked perfectly healthy.

So that's what I did. On Sunday I carried the tree back to the apartments -- in broad daylight, because although my behavior was morally ambiguous I'm not skulking around in the dark of night here -- and plunked it back in the hedge. We'll see what happens next.

Here's my newest Florida Memory postcard, and maybe the last one, assuming my mystery sender is doing this for a calendar year. It's a film still from "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," a 1954 monster movie that was filmed at Wakulla Springs. As Florida photos go I think it's a bit of a bust, because it doesn't really show any scenery, but hey -- you can't look a gift horse (or monster) in the mouth.

(Top photo: Hostas and hydrangeas near our back garden bench.)