More than 10 years ago I was slicing a grapefruit it half with a kitchen knife.  I don’t recall exactly when.  It may well be more than 10 years.  There was really nothing unusual about it until i looked inside one of the halves.  There, imbedded in the grapefruit’s flesh was a seed that had already sprouted.  I had never come across a seed that had sprouted inside a citrus fruit.

I took this as a good sign, and I planted in a small pot.

The plant grew and grew over the years.  I gradually transferred it to bigger and bigger pots in a nice sunny place on my Tokyo patio. For years, there was only growth.  No flowers.  No fruit.  Just some oddly shaped grapefruit leaves.  Perhaps two years ago three blossoms appeared on the tree only to be swept away by the strong bay winds.  I was ready to give up on the tree and chop it down.  I thought that after all these years perhaps this tree was just infertile and would never bear fruit.

This all changed this spring.  When the nights began to warm and the new green shoots were sprouting forth, that is when I noticed the little white bulbs.  Not just in one section of the tree as they had been a few years ago, but they cover the tree. The white flower’s sweet scent filling the air as I water the garden.

As spring will quickly become summer I pray that some of these flowers will hold on with all their might and transform themselves into fleshy grapefruit but that is greatly out of my hands.  I only tend the garden.  There is only One who can do that.

I am truly thankful that I waited and waited.  Now I can enjoy the sprouted seed from all those years ago from that halved grapefruit.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2015 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Photography Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.