DECISIONS, decisions. What to do, what to do? My own lemonade empire, perhaps? A lemon curd factory? Lemon sorbet? The opportunities are endless and the sky, it seems, is the limit.

We’re not exactly famed in this country for our citrus fruit, are we? We do lots of things very well, but oranges and lemons aren’t among them. Whatever those old St Clement’s bells say.

Suddenly though, I seem to be on to something. Out of the blue – or rather, out of the yellow – I’ve cultivated my own little lemon plantation, a majestic orchard in waiting.

Not the biggest orchard ever, I’ll give you that; there are nine plants in total. But they’re stunning specimens. Tremendous pieces of horticulture, every one of them.

The tallest is already approaching five inches and it’s going places, I can tell. The only way is up. I hope.

You can probably sense that these little green shoots have rather enthused me.

I planted the pips in small pots above the kitchen sink 18 months ago last week, left them to do their thing and then, suddenly, a few weeks later I noticed they had sprouted a good centimetre or so clear of the earth. I’m not sure why I didn’t notice the breakthrough straight away. Maybe I’d stopped truly looking, subconsciously fearing failure, secretly having lost hope before the little tykes had even poked through the soil. Or maybe I just hadn’t done the dishes for a few days.

Either way, they were alive and – what’s more – they still are, repotted twice and showing that lemony zest for life. And as you can tell, I’m fairly chuffed about it all.

It’s positively years since I could say I’d grown anything, unless you count some potatoes that sprouted last summer in the cupboard beside the fridge. And not since I was a young lad have I grown something from seed.

Back in those days, I was a right little Titchmarsh, avidly collecting pips and stones wherever I could – quite a mission in 1980s Scotland, where pear drops and chocolate oranges were classed as fruit.

In a good summer, we’d get a few apple pips, a plum stone and – if we’d been extravagant – perhaps even some melon seeds.

My dad and I would plant them in little pots and them some months later, long after I’d forgotten, he would point out the plants rising triumphantly. Apple pips often did okay, and I remember a pineapple seed defying the northern climes to make a good fist of it, but none ever lasted. Looking back, I wonder whether the plants I saw were the same ones we’d planted at all, or whether my dad was surreptitiously replacing them with random seedlings from B&Q to indulge my youthful excitement. Who knows?

Either way, these ones are definitely real, albeit a bit random. I’d bought some compost already, jealous of my friends Ian and Gill who have an allotment and made growing stuff look quite fun, and I wanted to get in on the act.

Lemons though? Not the most obvious place to start, granted, but I was binning the remnants of one that I’d used for cooking and thought I’d give it a try.

Call it a combination of over-enthusiastic madness, stupidity and one-upmanship. But it seems to have worked.

And it’s going to make me my fortune. You know why? Because climate change is on my side. Forget rising sea levels, holes in the ozone layer and chaotic weather cycles. A hotter world is going to turn York into a tropical paradise and ten years from now I’ll be the one laughing, enjoying the fruits of my labour. Sicily and Sorrento, eat your heart out! I’m off to register the trademark for the Yorkshire Limoncello Company.