this one’s about: limes

or low maintenance does mean some maintenance

When you move out of a rental property, you’re meant to leave it spotless. It should be as though you were never there. Make it as though you didn’t finish work and slink inside, kicking shoes off, throwing bags down, hanging coats. Make it as though your family didn’t bathe (exhaust fan on) or shower (glass squeegeed) or cook (range-hood on) daily.

You have to do this no matter the state of the place when you move in, no matter the obvious remnants of tenants past. I’ve found glasses in a dishwasher and roasting trays in an oven before. At our last place, we inherited a timber storage bench in a small courtyard rife with spiders.

The courtyard was a jumble of uneven terracotta bricks bordered by two narrow garden beds. They were full of mosquito-hoarding bromeliads, one with a thriving climbing wall of jasmine and a sad little tomato plant on the right, and one with a citrus tree on the left.

I knew it was citrus but couldn’t tell what kind of fruit it would bear. The promise was thrilling, though. Fruit! We could be the type of people that grew fruit at their inner west terrace! Visions of citrusy bliss: girls crowded around a little table and chairs with spritzes; lemony dinners outdoors, watching our toddler toddle.

The fruit, it turned out, was mutant. Some were like lemon, some grapefruit, and some like lime. For a while we had the lemon-grapefruit-lime in everything: thick rounds in fizzy water, zest on pasta, whole fruits stuffed inside chicken carcasses, juices squeezed over salads and fish.

Over summer an infestation of bronze orange bugs settled in. T came inside one day announcing the arrival of ‘some cool black bugs’. I went out to see for myself and reported back: ‘I don’t think that’s cool. I think it might be bad.’ We gloved and protective eyeweared our way through guilty attempts to drown them in soapy water.

The rental listing had promoted a low maintenance courtyard which, if I’m being honest, I did take to mean no maintenance. Soon, Boston fern spread across the garden bed beneath the strange citrus. The jasmine strangled anything in reach. The tomato plant didn’t make it.

I could never really enjoy the low maintenance courtyard that wasn’t being maintained, even lowly. I could never relax there for fear of spiders. Huntsmen were perfectly coloured for hiding along the wooden fences. Orb spiders hung between mutant citrus branches. Jumping spiders jumped. I searched online how to overcome my fear and found the infuriating advice: tolerate being around a spider.

It felt too onerous to do much work in that courtyard. Partly this was laziness and partly, I think, down to the knowledge we wouldn’t stay there long. All along that street there were blocks rendered vacant by demolition, making way for new builds, or scaffolds for renovations, between old terraces marked for sale and auction and sold. When they sold, it was never below one million, never at one million for that matter, usually more than one and a half.

When we learned the house would be sold at the end of our lease and we couldn’t stay, we had already decided to move. It felt better to simultaneously think it was our decision and that we had no choice – that way we weren’t being flighty or wasting money. It wasn’t up to us, no, but it was what we wanted anyway. You can convince yourself of this a lot when you rent.

Our first daughter has lived in three houses in not even four years of life. (Our second daughter has only lived in one, though she is not yet one herself). The uncertainty of when this expensive ticker will slow or maybe even come to a pause is insidious. This sense of impermanence always hovering at your shoulder, never letting you settle.

It makes it difficult to find the energy or enthusiasm or financial investment to maintain our current ‘low maintenance’ yard, too. This is despite knowing that life would be more pleasant if I got over myself and worked to weed or prune or possibly even plant, yes, because it’s me that has to see the damn place every day. Even if we will be asked to either leave or to pay more money next year, and asked one of those things again the year after that.

I should try to not let this bitterness get in the way of the life that happens regardless of ownership. Even in that spidery citrusy courtyard that I both wanted to be beautiful and that I hated, life happened. Two of our friends were married there, signing papers next to camomile flowers and sparkling wine in vintage orange coupes. P learnt to blow bubbles there. The laundry we hung changed from size 0 to size 2. We read a positive pregnancy test there. More life happens here still, and it will only ever be like this. It is no less lucky for being hard and no less hard for being lucky.

We are once again the guardians of a citrus tree. It, too, fell to bronze orange bugs last summer. But this time we cleared them and learned to treat the leaves with oil. This time the fruit is easily identifiable: limes! We have juiced them over avocados, zested them over rice and sliced them for drinks. P can pick the fruit herself now. Just last week she did so, proudly placing a single lime in the fridge.