{ Lemon tree and Pineapple juice }

I try to start all my mornings with a devotional.  It helps to set the mood for the day and things usually run smoother, but I'm human and sometimes I fail and don't get to my reading until right before bed.  That's ok, God forgives me and understands :)

Our weekend was filled with random thunderstorms, beautiful shows of lightning and loud booming thunder that at times seemed to rock the house.  My perfect kind of days, if I'm behind honest!

It actually got so dark in the house, that it was 9am and seemed to be 9pm.  Crazy!!

Sunday we dropped Jasmine off at work, and there is a Home Depot not too far, so we popped in to see if we could get some more items for our raised beds.  Well, raised beds is what we would love to have, but sometimes you need to go with what you can and whether we get exactly what we wanted, is yet to see.

However, we are simple folk who are easily pleased, and as long as I have a little area designated for my veg and herb garden, I'm ok.

If you remember when we were stationed in Arizona, I often mentioned our lemon tree.  It was our pride and joy and while we were at Luke, we were blessed enough to live in two different houses, both with lemon trees.  I mentioned the Beauty of Growth, I asked you How does your garden grow, I mentioned the Things I see and Do, I showed you when my lemon tree just randomly fell apart and I then talked about the reason it DID seem like it was falling apart, in my It's Raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring post.  I showed you how many lemons we had on our first lemon tree on base, and it all started on our Home Sweet Home post where I first showed you the walkthrough AND the huge lemons we got off the tree.  So, if you're interested, or bored, you have a lot of lemon tree and home posts to go browse through.

The scent of the flowers was one of my absolute favorite things.  You would take one step out the back door and were immediately overpowered by the beautiful gentle scent of the lemon flowers.

I think you can understand just how much I loved the lemon tree, so when we were at Home Depot, we spotted some baby Meier Lemon Trees and I just HAD to have it.  There was no way I was going to walk out with that baby in my hand.  I don't usually make spur of the moment purchases because we can't justify expenses like that, but she was only $13 and I started imagining the lemons and this gorgeous lemon tree filled with beautiful flowers.....yeah, I had to have it.

As you can see it already has a few little lemons growing on it.

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to keep it alive, I will do my absolute best.  I've been researching online and figuring out how much water it needs, how much sun and all that.

If you do have any ideas and advice on keeping Meier Lemon Trees alive in my area, PLEASE leave them down below.

Right, now let's shift gears and talk about pineapple.  I have a tip for you.  If you buy the full pineapple like I do, and peel it and chop it up for your family, don't throw away the pineapple skin.

I used to, until I found out that I could use it to make juice.  What is better for you than pure, fresh, natural juice?

Some of you may already know this or do it yourself, but for those that don't, here is the how to.

You'll need the skin from the pineapple you peeled, water and you may need some sort of sweetener if you find the pineapple is too bitter.

Pop the skins into your blender and add water.  I start off by adding just about half so that I don't end up with water spitting all out of the blender and all over the counters.

Blend for about 2 minutes or so.  Then using a strainer, pour the juice into a different container.  You want to get as much of the pulp out, and obviously don't want he actual skins in there, just the goodness, vitamins and the taste.

And that is it.  Delicious, natural juice using what you already have on hand :)

Right, I am now off to pick Jasmine up from work and then I have to rush home and get dinner done.  I don't like when she gets off around 4pm because that's usually when I start my dinner, so on days like these we eat later than usual.

Tonight's dinner is one of our favorites Ono's Hawaiian Grilled Chicken and I'll either do Potato Salad or the Ono's Macaroni Salad.

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of Tuesday.  It is pretty warm here today, 88 degrees so I'm going to grab my lemon water and some grapes from the fridge and head out the door.

See you all tomorrow :)