Huzzban stirs when I get up to close the sliding door against the coming storm. I would rather leave it open, but the shade is big and heavy, and when it's blowing hard it clangs against the wall and there's no sleeping through that. He rolls over and asks, sleepily, "Do we need to bring Lem in?"

Lem is the name we have given our Meyer Lemon plant. It was given to us as a wedding gift by some dear friends, and we have been through a lot together. We have moved it across the country three times (GA-VT-IL-GA), and only found out at the last minute on the Vermont to Chicago leg of this tour that we were not allowed to put live plants in the moving truck, so we had to leave behind the pot and almost all of the foliage and jam it into what little space remained in the trunk of our Honda Civic. It has stood in for a Christmas tree when we didn't have room for one, gotten infested with god-knows-what in our previous house (again I had to repot and it remove all of it's leaves and most of it's branches), and yet it still comes back, even bearing fruit again last year. Lem is happy in Georgia, but he still has to be protected from the elements for a couple of months each year. During that time, he lives in the corner of our walk-in shower, getting hand-pollinated and, as weather allows, scooted in and out to the patio. You have noticed that I switched pronouns on Lem, right? We decided it was a he when we gave it the name Lem, short for lemon but also as an homage to Officer Curtis "Lem" Lemansky from The Shield. Yes, we're weird. but if you've been here before this is no surprise to you. 

Anyway the answer was yes, Lem needed to come in. There are only a few lemons developing after a very promising number of blossoms -I'm talking 30 to 40 minimum- and I am not taking any chances on losing those to wind damage. So he jumped out of bed, and I slid the doors open, and he carefully steered all of the branches through the opening and toward the bathroom. Looking outside, I realized that I had also left a couple of small tomato plants out there. I have them in pots while we wait for the weather to make up it's mind. they won't go in the ground for at least another week or two. I grab them and hand them off, and proceed to close the doors and shade. From the other room, a clank as one of the pots goes sideways onto the tile. 

"Sorry," mutters huzzban.

  "Did you just apologize to the tomato plant?"

"Yes, yes I did."

So I guess we'll have to think up names for those now.