It’s springing around here! The coyotes are howling at night.
The garlic is popping; the rhubarb…forgettaboutit! The blueberry frame’s shoulder is broken. The wicked winter brought it down. The onions are planted; the squash bed is ready. The grass is a cow’s green dream!
And possibility is positively tangible! But this, this is what I have been dreaming about. The stone fruit orchard is here! There’s a history to this little wanna-be orchard that goes, in brief, like this:
The Santa Rosa (I think?) plums in the back were here when we got here. We didn’t even know they were there that first year, or what a plum tree even looked like – yikes! Until one day we looked up and there we see a sea of blushing beauties bobbing in the breeze – 1000 plums or more! Then they were gone and never came back.
Three years ago, we ordered eight little sticks promising all kinds of fruit. We planted them and they grew a little. The deer loved them all, completely, until those little budding sticks were no more. So after lamenting the loss of our lovelies last year, we decided to bring in the professionals.
They pruned the hell out of those old plums and told us there is a good chance they’ll fruit again! They planted, moving forward from the plums, a Regina cherry, a Rynbrandt cherry, a Goldcot apricot, a Blenheim apricot, a Reliance peach and a Redhaven peach! And lo, they also saved one other of those sticks we planted three years ago that actually grew.
I have a soaring hope that someday we’ll be chillin’ on this little stone bench overlooking our stone fruit orchard, the sky heavy with fruit. The air intoxicating.
And hope is the essence of spring, no?