Harvesting
. . . . .This was going to be the year. Finally, my family and I would enjoy apples from the two trees I’d planted several years before.
. . . . .I envisioned the trees – one Red Delicious and one Royal Gala – as a sort of memorial to my mother and as a direct way of carrying on, with my children, her tradition of nurturing fruit trees and harvesting fruit. Lee and Charlie had loved our summer visits to Mom’s home in California where they helped pick apricots, plums, peaches and lemons from the half dozen or so trees in her backyard. For weeks after we returned from the visits, they said things like “I can’t wait to go back and pick more apricots” and “Grandma even let me get up on the ladder!”
. . . . .After Mom died, I wanted us to have fruit trees, too, and for the kids and me to pick the fruit. It would connect us to her. The children were eight and six at the time and I imagined many summers of harvesting apples, pears or peaches together. I wasn’t sure which fruits would do well in the humid summers and cold winters of Washington DC so I talked about it with Sam at the local nursery. He suggested dwarf apple trees because they would bear fruit faster than the full-size variety and would grow well in our climate.
. . . . .“Dwarf?” I asked, thinking about the miniature Mayten we’d had in the yard of my childhood home. At age 10, I could look down on it. My parents had inadvertently damaged its roots while planting it, creating a bonsai of sorts.
. . . . .“Even dwarfs grow quite large,” Sam said. He explained that the two he’d ordered would pollinate each other.
. . . . .After the order came in, Sam sent someone over to plant the trees in our front yard, the only real sunny spot. The children were at school. The man from the nursery dug two large holes in the garden and planted the small trees, each about four feet high. That night during dinner, I announced that our apple trees had arrived. After our meal, the kids and I went out to look at the trees which were probably about the same height as them, at the time -- nine and seven years old.
. . . . .“When will we have apples?” Lee asked, clearly a little disappointed at the size of the trees, and their bare branches.
. . . . .“It’ll take a year or so,” I said, not wanting to show my ignorance. I had no idea when they’d bloom but knew it wouldn’t be the first season. “They’re dwarf trees so they might not get as big as Grandma’s.”
. . . . .“They’re not much bigger than we are,” Charlie said.
. . . . .“That’ll change,” I said, optimistically.
. . . . .I followed directions for pruning newly-planted apple trees, trying to create the shape suggested in the book, reduce crossover of the branches and provide more daylight for each branch. With the trees as scrawny as they were, every branch had plenty of sunlight.
. . . . .It didn’t surprise me the first year when there were no blossoms, and hence, no fruit. The second year was similar. The trees were growing, slowly but steadily, and producing nothing. Each year, I pruned them as described in my fruit tree guide, and fertilized them. I’ll be patient, I thought, trying to convince myself of that. And then winter would arrive. I’d forget about the trees as they and the whole garden hibernated.
. . . . .Around the third spring, a few blossoms came out, followed by small, plum-sized fruit. I watched carefully to see what happened but only a couple of apples grew to a medium size and never turned red.
. . . . .“These apple trees sure take a long time to have fruit,” Lee commented one day while she was out in the yard with me. She sat on the bench keeping me company while I weeded around the daisies, calamintha, parsley and basil. Our two black cats picked their way among the plants, sniffing one now and then, stopping to look at a bird nearby.
. . . . .“Yeah, I thought Sam at the nursery said the dwarf trees would produce fruit faster. But these aren’t doing much,” I said.
. . . . .That spring I attempted to understand the situation. I read two more gardening books but didn’t find them helpful. I tried to talk with Sam but he just shrugged. Apparently, he’d exhausted his knowledge of fruit trees with his recommendation of the dwarf trees and wasn’t interested in learning more on my behalf. I called the local agricultural extension service, surprised to find one in Washington, D.C., but didn’t receive a call back.
. . . . .After that, each spring they’d produce a few blossoms, a few small fruits and nothing more. I felt stuck. I didn’t have time to take on a major educational project about becoming an apple farmer and I felt I’d done what I could on a less intense scale. I sort of gave up. I stopped giving them even the minimal attention I’d earlier bestowed on them and became distracted by other things. With a writing business, a husband, my two children and a houseful of pets, my attention was called in many directions.
. . . . .One spring when Charlie and I were at the nursery together, he spotted a coleus.
. . . . .“Look at the red leaves, Mom.”
. . . . .“I like coleus,” I said, thinking of the times I’d grown them indoors.
. . . . .“Can we put it in the garden?”
. . . . .“Let’s try.” We bought one and that afternoon Charlie dug a hole, very carefully putting the soil from the hole in a nearby pile. We mixed the native dirt with soil amendment, as it’s called formally though I consider it a lifesaver for the plants from the suffocating hard, red clay that comprises most of the yard.
. . . . .Even though both children loved picking fruit with my Mom, Charlie was more interested in working with me in the garden. Perhaps Lee was averse to dirt and earthworms.
. . . . .When Charlie finished putting the coleus in the ground and covering it with soil, he watered it and we sat on the nearby bench, talking.
. . . . .“The apple trees are getting big,” he said, and they were – about 10 feet tall and appearing healthy. Charlie himself was about half their size.
. . . . .“They look great,” I said. “I just wish they’d bear fruit.”
. . . . .“Maybe next year,” he said, running off to play catch.
. . . . .We came to think of the trees as we did the nearby dogwoods and azaleas. They leafed in the spring, provided shade in the summer and were part of the landscape of the front bed, kept company by azaleas, rudbeckia, quince and gladiolas. When we sat on the weathered teak bench and looked out at the garden, more often than not we’d notice the flowers and whatever was happening in the cul-de-sac. The apple trees became background.
. . . . .This year was different. Seven years since they were planted, the taller of the two trees, the Royal Gala – now 12 feet tall or so – bore lots of fruit, I mean five young apples per each branch tip for about 150 burgeoning apples on the whole tree. This boded well for a plentiful harvest. This was amazing.
. . . . .“We have apples, lots of apples,” I told everyone at dinner that night. “I think we’ll have a real crop.” They interrupted their meal to run out and look, disappointed at the small green marbles prompting my excitement.
. . . . .“They still have to grow all summer,” I defended myself, “But eventually they’ll be apples!”
. . . . .My gardening books, now a bit more useful, said to pick off some of the early small apples so others would be larger and, as much as it pained me to do so, I did.
. . . . .“Why are you pulling off all those little apples?” Charlie asked when he saw me. “They’re not ripe yet.” Now 14, he was playing basketball on the driveway, trying to encourage me to join him.
. . . . .“I know – it’s weird,” I said. “But my book says to pick off the ones that are in clumps and leave only one per branch tip. That way, it says, the one that remains will be larger.”
. . . . .I was very excited by this new development. Wow, what I’d dreamed of doing with the kids might really happen, I thought, recalling why I’d planted the trees in the first place. Thoughts of my mom, never far under any circumstance, became more vivid and I remembered the sunny back patio of the home Lee and Charlie visited: golden marguerites, lupine, poppies, forsythia and the laden fruit trees spread up the steep hill behind the house. In clay pots on the patio, Mom had planted geraniums, primroses, impatiens and lobelia.
. . . . .I thought of the yard of my childhood with Mom and Dad working in it almost every spring and summer weekend, Mom in old pedal pushers and a sleeveless top, Dad in stained khakis and a white t-shirt. They’d created a terraced vegetable garden in the side yard and spent hours planting, weeding, watering and harvesting – lettuce, tomatoes, green beans, artichokes, rhubarb, chard, carrots, and lemons. Apple and plum trees co-existed with the vegetables even though they cast shade. Dad knew how to prune fruit trees, and he did – on a ladder once a year. Also from his ladder, he regularly sprayed the trees with insecticide. During those months, no matter how hard she scrubbed, Mom often had dirt under her fingernails and, in a rare moment of vanity, she’d complain about her chipped fingernails.
. . . . .Neither my brother, Jeff, nor I helped much in the garden and certainly never voluntarily. We weren’t interested. In fact, I was surprised when I started to enjoy working in the garden in my 30s. What had happened? I thought it was just me until a neighbor and I got to talking one day and he admitted to scoffing at his father’s love of gardening in prior years and now, here in his 40s, he was digging in dirt.
. . . . .This year, each day Charlie, Lee and I watched the tree and observed the apples getting larger, going from grape-size to plum-size. Some were even getting larger than plums. These were the biggest apples this tree had ever created. I anticipated being able to observe their progress throughout the summer. Charlie asked what we’d do with all the apples.
. . . . .“At the very least, we’ll make applesauce,” I said, knowing it was a favorite of his and also knowing that even if the harvested apples were small and tart, they could be mashed up into sauce and, with enough sugar, made to taste sweet. Even the smaller, less fruitful tree, was bearing several apples. This was going to be the year, I thought.
. . . . .Before we went away for a week in late June, I looked over the trees and noticed that a leaf on the small one was being eaten by little bugs so I sprayed it with insecticidal soap and searched for others that might be afflicted. There weren’t any.
. . . . .I checked the apple trees a final time before we left town to make sure I’d pulled off enough small, competing apples. Leaving the trees even for just a week was tugging at me, causing me to wish we weren’t going away, at least not right then. They’ll be fine, I assured myself as we drove off to Dulles airport.
. . . . .The day after we returned from our trip, Charlie said, “Mom, let’s check the apples,” and all three of us ran out to the yard. One small apple hung from a lower branch on the large tree and the smaller tree was completely empty. One apple. I looked up, walked around both trees, looked on the ground. Nothing. Of the hundreds of apples on both trees, only one remained. I was stunned. Charlie came over and gave me a hug. Neither of us spoke for a long time.
. . . . .“I’m so sorry, Mom,” Charlie said.
. . . . .“This was going to be the year,” I said, wiping away some tears. Lee came over and held my hand.
. . . . .We went inside and pondered the situation. What had caused such a disaster? Deer? But they can’t climb trees. Raccoons? Eating sour, unripe apples? Pranksters? A lot of work for teenagers. We knew there’d been severe wind storms while we were away. But if the wind blew them off, wouldn’t there be apples on the ground?
. . . . .I spoke about it with a friend who’d grown up in Washington state – famous for its apples – and she said one storm can knock out a whole orchard. “My family once came upon a couple in Montana right after a thunderstorm and their whole crop was gone. Hundreds of trees bare. They were devastated.”
. . . . .“Can’t you do anything about it,” I asked. “Can you cover the trees?”
. . . . .“You can’t cover a whole orchard,” she said, matter-of-factly and started talking about something else. Yes, but I didn’t have a whole orchard. Just two trees, I thought but it was moot for this year.
. . . . .A storm. That was an explanation of sorts but not a cure. I still felt defeated and unhappy. I was confused that no apples were left on the ground. I walked around the house wishing things had been different, that I hadn’t been away, that there had been something to do, that there hadn’t been any storms, that at least a few more apples had remained.
. . . . .I fretted for a few days, many thoughts swirling in my head, including my recent remembrances of my mother and her bowls of apples and why I’d wanted the apple trees so much. Time was almost up for my harvesting dreams. In two years, Lee would be away at college and the kids wouldn’t be interested in running out to the trees and helping with a harvest.
. . . . .I cursed myself for not paying more attention to the trees each year. Maybe if I’d fertilized and pruned more consistently, the trees would have borne fruit earlier. Maybe I could have been more consistent about seeking advice. Many emotions tangled up over the damn trees, too many. And then, in the midst of my dark mood, I stopped.
. . . . .No tree can carry that much weight, I thought, laughing softly, a wry chuckle I’d inherited from my mother. If I’d so wanted to harvest something with the kids, I could have planted green beans or tomatoes, I thought. But, it suddenly dawned on me, I was doing other things with the children, activities that would create our own memories like building forts with the furniture and blankets, baking Christmas cookies every year, playing basketball on the driveway with Charlie, walking the dog with Lee. They’d remember those things, and me – just as I remembered Mom.
. . . . .Perhaps I was mistaken to try to fabricate memories for us that connected us to Mom. And, besides, I thought, feeling a little peace about the whole episode, they’d have their separate memories of my mom.
. . . . .And then, Charlie burst into the room in a panic that he couldn’t find his baseball mitt. I turned my attention to the crisis at hand.
Christy Wise, author, essayist and freelance writer, lives in Washington DC with her husband, two teenagers, a dog and two cats. Her essays have been published in The Sigurd Journal and the Wall Street Journal and her articles have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers. She is co-author, with her mother, of A Mouthful of Rivets: Women at World in World War II.
