Two lemons, not the whole drop

The lemon tree belongs to the front house. The branches don't know the fence line. After a wind, fruit shows up in the gravel on my side, sometimes split, sometimes fine, with a leaf still attached. The owner told me in the first month to take whatever falls. She said it like a person who is tired of lemons, which she might be. Her kitchen window is close to the tree. She sees them every day. I see them when I take the trash out.

If I collect all of them, they sit in the blue bowl and go soft at the stem end before I use them. I have done this. The soft ones I cut open anyway, and half the time the inside is still good and I feel thrifty, and half the time it isn't and I have dirtied a board for nothing. So now I take two. The rest stay in the gravel until the weekend, when she or her son walks the fence and picks up their side and, if they feel like it, mine.

Two lemons is enough for the week. One goes into the water bottle I take to the office, sliced thin, the bottle tasting like the plastic more than the fruit by afternoon. The other I use on fish or on the edge of a pan when I'm cooking for myself and want the kitchen to smell like I planned something. This week the second one is still on the counter. The skin is firm. I'll use it tonight.

The ants found a split one by the gate. I moved it to the green bin with a shovel, not with my hand. The shovel lives next to the cooler. Both of them are slightly sticky. The back house has a talent for that. Nothing is dirty exactly. Everything has been near sugar or meltwater at some point, and the towel on the fence is the honest record.