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Afterschool: Learning About Lemons!

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When we moved into our house a couple weeks ago I posted this picture on Instagram, all excited because I thought we had an avocado tree!

It only had a few fruits hanging in it, and from several feet below, on the ground, they looked like avocadoes.

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We finally decided to pick one to see if it was ripe, figuring that, if it wasn’t, we could let it ripen on the counter. As soon as I got up close, I realized it was not an avocado.

I thought maybe it was a large lime, until we opened it up. Nope – it’s not an avocado, and it’s not a lime. It’s a very unripe lemon! Too unripe, even, to turn our lemons into lemonade!

I felt very silly for thinking it was an avocado tree, until I googled images and confirmed that avocado trees actually do look a fair bit like lemon trees! Then I only felt a little bit silly, and the kids enjoyed a great lesson on how appearances can be deceiving!

We have a couple lemons left on the tree, and hopefully they will get ripe before it gets too cold, so we can make some fresh lemonade!

That was the big afterschool learning lesson this week! We are still struggling with driving kids to two different (both non-neighborhood) schools, and there’s a chance one of my kids will switch over to homeschooling. Lots of decisions to make this week!

afterschool linky

2013 After School Party HOSTS

The Educators’ Spin On It
Afterschool for Smarty Pants
Boy Mama Teacher Mama
Coffee Cups and Crayons
Little Wonders’ Days
Mama Smiles
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational
The Measured Mom
This Reading Mama
What Do We Do All Day

How was your week of afterschooling? I loved this Halloween Art for Kids activity from Buggy and Buddy, and these Yarn Pumpkins from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom. Thank you for sharing your activities each week – I love all the inspiration! Remember that by linking up you give us permission to feature your post and to add it to our After School Activities & Adventures Pinterest board!

MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.

22 thoughts on “Afterschool: Learning About Lemons!”

  1. How awesome to have a lemon tree! I have a lemon tree in my garden. I didn’t realize that’s what it was until this Winter. It only produced 2 lemons but I’m hoping it will do more next year! I can’t believe how much pulp is on that lemon of yours!

  2. Fresh lemons will be wonderful but I would have been excited thinking it was an avocado tree too! They are my favorite! Good luck with all your decisions!

  3. Bummer about the avocado tree, but lemon are good too :-) I have a friend that moved to California and was thinking she also had an avocado tree in her backyard, end up it was a fig tree!!!!

    I am sure you will be a great homeschooling mother :-) Best of luck to makes all those decisions that need to be made!!!

  4. Wow that was a lemon? Is that what it looks like while it’s ripening or is it good o go? That’s some thick skin lol. My mother in law has all sorts of fruit trees in her yard, and it’s awesome to have bucket fulls of fruits to eat!

  5. I think the best thing about living in California is growing your own citrus fruits! I love the Meyer Lemon … you might want to get one. Even a small potted one will yield fruit!

  6. How fun! I hope your lemons taste wonderful when they ripen! I’d love to have a fruit tree (or 3 or 4). Good luck with the homeschooling decision.

  7. Oh how I wish I could have an avocado or a lemon tree. In CA we had a lemon and an orange tree but the oranges always were weird. The avocado tree in the lot next door never got fruit and I learned that you need a male and a female tree in close proximity to produce fruit.

    1. And I didn’t realize you lived in CA! Seems most of my blog friends have been here, at some point or another!

      I hear that it’s tricky to get oranges to taste right – the soil has to be perfect.

  8. Hope you are able to make your decisions… we are going through similar decisions though we are happy with where our son is right now. That is too funny about the tree, but I would totally have made that mistake too!

  9. Elisa | blissfulE

    Don’t feel silly – we have an orange tree that we thought was a lemon tree because the oranges look like lemons (we’re endeavouring to fertilise properly so they taste more like oranges than lemons, too). I would love to have an avocado tree in my back garden, but they get HUGE, so we’ll probably go with a macadamia nut tree instead.

  10. This was too funny :) By the way, our lemons and limes usually ripe by the end of winter, not in fall :)

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