Taking my own advice

You know the adage “do as I say, not as I do”?  I’m the worst.  I did a little research for my post at work about citruses which pretty much confirmed what I already knew.  I am a plant slayer.  And I don’t like to take my own advice because it’s generally tedious or time consuming or otherwise inconvenient.  I have been keeping my ponderosa lemon orphan out in the plantry because it looks good out there showing its fruit off to the neighbors and because it would take up too much room inside.  I knew it was the wrong place for it.  Citruses, as I reminded myself the other day, can take temperature dips into the 40’s but prefer to winter at about 60°.  The plantry’s average nightly temperatures are in the 40’s but sometimes drops into the scary low 30’s like when I forget to turn on the heater or when it goes into the single digits outside – which has been a fairly frequent occurence this winter.  And the lemon doesn’t look so good.  Although, since I’ve moved it to the livingroom, scattering lemons, branches and leaves in my wake, I’ve decided it looked a lot better before.  Now it will be a daily reproof sitting sickly at the end of my couch, taking up half of a much darker room and plagued by horticulturally fixated kittens who don’t realize just how thorny the thing is.  But what’s a plant junkie to do?  I can’t bring it back to the greenhouse – the only reason I have it is because we don’t have room for it there.  And I can’t put it out in the very cold to die quickly.  The only thing to do is to do as I say, not as I do.