::: ode to the cherry tree :::

Blow-Up

Our cherry tree
Unfolds whole loads
Of pink-white bloom -
It just explodes.

For three short days
Its petals last.
Oh, what a waste.
But what a blast.

~X. J. Kennedy

When we bought our first piece of property in a rural county eight and a half years ago, one of the first things I did was take seriously author Gene Logsdon's advice to plant fruit trees first. I ordered a selection of bareroot dormant saplings from Schlabach's Nursery and waited. Our good friend Richard, who had sold us the property, came with a tractor and auger attachment and dutifully dug holes where I pointed, which I then filled with organic junk--manure, peat, sawdust--and I was ready for my trees to arrive. 

When they came, life was moving a bit too fast, so I followed the instructions, keeping what looked like dead sticks moist and cool. I couldn't believe, looking at these things, that they would ever actually be trees. And I was right, for some of them. The nectarine and one plum never did grow. One peach tree filled with peaches last summer and then, before they ripened, before the promise of peach jam and peach pie, they all withered and the tree died. It stands there still. I haven't yet had the heart to cut it down. I kept hoping that, this year, in the face of all that is obvious, it would still bloom and produce fruit, but it has not. 

The cherry tree, however, which was actually planted very first and came not from Schlabach's Nursery but from a greenhouse sale the very first year we were here, was planted in the fall of 2000 and has grown into a fine and beautiful tree. It's called a Hedelfingen Cherry tree and is supposed to produce sweet cherries. Unfortunately, we haven't really had much fruit from it, and the cherries are not large and sweet, but small and light in color. I planted a companion for this tree in hopes of providing a pollinator, but that tree hasn't grown so well and even had to work hard to recover from the damages caused by renegade goats. 

But the blooms on the Hedelfingen tree are beautiful, and when I look out my kitchen window to see the bursts of white inviting the bees to come and feast, my heart knows that it's spring. It asks me if I'd like to stop what I'm doing, pack a picnic lunch, and relax beneath its boughs. 

I'm so glad that I took Mr. Logsdon's advice. I do hope to come up with a good pest prevention program, as my poor trees are constantly attacked by every aphid and curculio there can possibly be, but, still, the benefits of beauty remain. 

Follow Mr. Logsdon's advice. Do yourself and the bees a favor. Plant a fruit tree today!