I am addicted to the website Zulily.com. Zulily is a website that you subscribe to and then receive an email every day with new sales from vendors, like Dansko, Sanita, various clothing, Lancome, pet supplies, and anything else you can imagine. You can buy classroom materials (and I do!). You can buy an exercise bike (and I did!) and you can buy garden supplies and plants, and just about anything else.
Sales only last a few days, so a lot of times, I just put items in my online cart and then let the sale end and never buy what I didn't actually need anyway. But sometimes (okay, more than I'd like to admit), I do purchase items from Zulily and then forget.
You see, the thing about this website is that the shipping takes a long time. It's not fast. So you have to plan ahead OR just order things you don't need at the moment. Since I put lots of possible purchases in my shopping cart, I often forget which ones I ordered and which I didn't. So I never know what to expect. It's kind of fun, but I also feel pretty guilty about it.
But this post is about one of the nice surprises.
Last year, I ordered a patio lemon tree from a gardening company. I did it very spontaneously - I wasn't looking for one at all - but it was about $20 so I decided to order it. I have no idea how to take care of a lemon tree, not to mention a lemon tree that has to be brought inside for winter.
When it arrived, it came in a nice rectangular box, just like you might get something from 1-800-flowers. Opening it up, I found a small plant with several small, white flowers on it. I was pretty impressed that it survived shipping with flowers still intact.
I set it up outside and hoped for the best. Gradually, over the summer, it started growing fruit. First very green, then turning to a bright yellow around September. In the end I had about 5 lemons on this small $20 tree! But that's not the best part.
The best part is that I had to take it in for the cold months, and I was able to keep it alive! I'm not sure how much light or water it really needs, so I'm playing it by ear, but the plant is still kicking, and I'm happy to report that in the last few weeks, it has started blooming! I'm so excited! I get so much pleasure out of knowing I kept this plant alive in my house all winter, with enough sun and water to continue to bloom. I look forward to getting more lemons this year, too!
So, I guess the moral of the story is...impulse buys from Zulily aren't that bad, right? I think I'll just go check on today's sales right now...
I "dabble" on zulily, too; just ordered a few pieces of clothing from them at ridiculously low prices! I never thought to look at plants, though; how fun to get one that grows and produces, and brings you joy in the dreary winter months as well!
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