Snack Chat: Friends With Lemons

On bounty

Roughly two years ago, soon after my separation, my friend Chris stopped by my new place with a paper bag full of lemons. I put the lemons in a bowl by the window.

Both of us had moved to LA from New York around the same time, but Chris arrived here in ways I still have not — surfing and moving with his wife, my friend Mollie, into a house with a lemon and kumquat tree. These trees produce so much fruit they seem, at times, to stress him out. I am happy to help. Before moving here, I’d never been thanked for being gifted lemons, kumquats, pomegranates, plums, persimmon, even avocados. This is the California that New Yorkers dream about in February and that, somehow, despite the state’s many detractions, actually exists.