It's Not Easy Being Green

Kermit's song, as expressed by a beleaguered Thai lime tree overwintering indoors, and tulips trying to hang on outdoors.

Tiny little full leaf.

In particular, if you are a Thai lime tree living in my household under a regime of benign neglect. Despite watering - ok, make up watering after two weeks of deprivation - the Thai lime dried out and shed its leaves. Every time I brushed past it or bent my head near it, and thorns caught my hair and I tugged ever so slightly on the tree to disentangle myself, a few leaves dropped. But then, with the compensation watering, which I had hoped would stem the leaf shedding, it only got worse; they all seemed to want to end their misery and separate themselves from the unnourishing limbs. So, I decided to embrace it and collect the leaves for cooking.

Five fresh leaves remain. Well, really, four half leaves and one teeny tiny full leaf. Hopeful for more to grow in, as happened last year. It's always bounced back for me.

Withered upper half of a leaf, and normal lower half.

Full on dry shrivel.

I took to gathering the shed leaves in the rim of the pedestal planter...

... and then gathered them all into a container.

The mostly bald limbs.

It's not easy being tulips in the Jardin, either. I've neglected the Jardin more than usual the past year. There is a bag of mulch from Mulchfest that Sissy so helpfully retrieved for me (the weekend I left town on a work conference), but I have yet to deploy it. 

Tulips emerging.

So the tulips are shivering.

Somewhat older bulbs, not quite so vigorous.

Or, alternately, they are fooled by our False Spring into thinking they need to sprout like crazy to catch up to the intermittently brief early Summer temperatures. Yo-yo. Par for the course for New York City.

First real snow blanket.

[Edited to completion March 17, 2023.]