Making Guava Juice out of Guavas

The New Herb Garden

Growing up, when things didn’t go our way my mom used to sing us kids the famous line from the Rolling Stones song “You don’t always get what you want, but one of these days you might just find you get what you need”.   It pretty much ruined the song for me, but over time, I’ve found that my mom and Mic might actually be on to something.  Case in point.  Last week I decided to prune (and I mean PRUNE) back our guava bush.  I had told my husband I was going to be busting out the pruners, but either he wasn’t listening or he forgot because when he got home from work and saw my handiwork he thought I was trying to cut it down.  So as the wonderful husband that he is, he decided to surprise me and finish the deed for me (Gasp)!  Then he came in the house and asked my son and me to check out his work.  I’m pretty sure I had a look of horror or on my face when I saw the sad remains of the tree.  That look was quickly followed by the “What did you do?” look.  Rapidly followed by my husbands, “Uh Oh, what did I do?” look.  And we both realized that the poor guava tree had suffered from our failure to communicate.  The whole situations made me want to cry and laugh at the same time. 

At that point the deed was done and we both felt bad.  So we decided to do the only thing you can do in that situation, make guava juice out of guavas.  We have a mandarin tree in our back yard that has been living in a half wine barrel for the last six years.  I have wanted to plant it, but never could come up with a good spot for it in our yard.  Well, it was the mandarin tree’s lucky day…a space had just opened up.  So the next day my husband dug up the remaining portion of the guava bush and we planted the mandarin tree in its place.  Then I created an herb garden (the though of making my own herb de provence makes me swoon and my mouth water) in the vacated half wine barrel.  Viola, guava juice out of guavas.  Now it makes me smile every time I walk by the orange tree happily planted in the ground and the awesome herb garden starting growing in the barrel.  So you see, it is sometimes true that you don’t always get what you want, but you just might find…you get what you need (although I’m not so sure the guava bush would agree)!