On Wednesday, I posted a photo of a cardboard box filled with guavas. So I'll bet you hookah folks are wondering what the heck I'm doing, right? After all, it's not a box of guava shisha and this is, after all, a hookah blog! Rest assured, I haven't lost my mind -- at least not today. As you'll soon see, there is a method to my madness. The guavas in the box came from one of the two trees that grow in our yards. I actually cultivated these two trees from seeds -- yes, from seeds! Several years ago, a friend of ours who had just returned from Egypt, told us that she had brought a couple of guavas with her to eat on the plane and had forgotten about them during the trip. When we saw her, she had just eaten one and was ready to toss out the seeds. Ali, who happens to love guavas, asked for the seeds and told her how I had grown a couple of avocado trees from seeds. He was convinced that I could do the same thing with the guava seeds.
Not knowing how successful the venture would be, I planted the seeds into a couple of empty laundry detergent buckets and set them on the patio. I watered and checked on them regularly. It didn't take long before the seeds sprouted and full-fledged trees were in the making. When we bought our home, Ali carefully transplanted the saplings -- one in the front yard and one in the side yard. I continued to water and look after them, wondering if they would ever bear fruit. Not being a guava fan myself, I really hoped for Ali's sake that the trees would blossom. It took about eleven years of care and now, for the past five years, those trees have borne fruit!
When it's guava season, our house is the place on the block to be. Even though the front yard is not fenced in, our neighbors don't just help themselves to the fruit; they will knock on the door and ask permission to take some! Ali, of course, harvests them by the bags full to share with his Egyptian pals because, I suppose, to the guava experts of the world, Egyptian guavas are different than the type that can be found easily in Southern California.
The photo that I posted on Wednesday is a reminder that with care and attention, a small idea can blossom into an incredible harvest. Don't give up too easily on dreams; cultivate and care for them like I did for those guava seeds and you just might get an equally amazing result!
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