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This Garden Blog is published every Saturday at 9AM EST, year round. We comment throughout the week and have some funny content for the group each Sunday. Thank you all for stopping by this week and we hope to see you next Saturday as well.
My son is on the autism spectrum, officially ‘severe’, although I would say ‘moderate’. He can communicate, very well in fact, yet speaks sparingly and holds much to himself. A young man of few words and a great many unshared thoughts.
One evening, when he was around seven or eight, we were running errands and he asked me if I was his mom. I said yeah, of course I am your mom, I was there when you were born. You are 100% mine. He began to cry, upset. I asked why he was sad. He was genuinely concerned that he wasn’t mine. He was insistent that he wasn’t my baby. He said he did not look like me at all. This is almost completely true, as he is a carbon copy of his Dad.
But he has my ears. I reassured my littlest deep-feeling boy, explaining genetics and reminding him that his Dad’s genes are pretty strong, all my babies look more like his Dad, even my daughter. A hug was offered and accepted, right there under the neon lights of the store signs.
“I was there when you were born, and those are my ears.”
Repeated throughout the years, as needed. He still makes a comment about it, every now and again.
~
I have a small backyard sized double apple tree. My garden friends here know what the next few sentences will reveal, but for the rest of you all…
Rabbits killed some of my fruit trees. Been in this house for many years and this is the first winter they chewed up the apple tree trunk, from the base up four feet into the canopy. It was a hard winter, record snowfall. Lifted the rabbits right into canopy of my trees, most of the trunks wrapped. Heartbroken (actual tears were shed), I put some Tree Wound paste on the trunk, hoped for the best and planned for its replacement.
For Mother’s day, my kids bought me a new double apple tree, per my request. Except my youngest. He forgot and bought me a huge box of Cheez Its and some fabulous football trading cards instead. Mid- May I planted the new tree just a few feet from the mature tree, knowing the mature tree was chewed to death by bunny teeth and soon to be chopped down.
Well, that funny thing happened on the way to the wood chipper. The dying tree, missing its bark four feet up the trunk, was leafing out. Then it flowered its fragrant pink and white blossoms. And fruited. The fruit grew. The tree aborted some of the fruit, a normal process for a fruit tree with too many fruit to support. I bagged the remaining baby apples to protect them from coddling moth. Last week, I harvested the last of the 30+ perfect apples the small dying tree provided.
I do not know how the tree was able to support that level of growth with its vascular system heavily damaged, but it did.
I have to tell you all something about me and hope. I am not a fan of it. Hopes are dashed, are often false and a product of envy, an affliction I suffer from more than I care to admit. I prefer promises kept, words honored and trust built with action and helpful behavior. No hopey thoughts and prayers for this girl.
But I did hope beyond all hope that my apple tree would live. This apple tree is the reason I burst into tears and told my soon-to-be-husband that THIS was the house, while home hunting. We had toured quite a few houses, got outbid on one that ended up flooded the next year (and was blocks from the in-laws), then found this house. My husband wasn’t sure this was The One, and toured it without me first as I had to work. He knew the dining room and kitchen would be too small. But he also knew I liked the neighborhood (we passed on the famous Cat Pee house a few doors down) and that I would be charmed the large yard. So we went to the open house that next day.
The kitchen and dining room is too small, no lies told there. Then I walked unto our deck and saw the trees. Two of them. A Rainier cherry and the double apple tree. Both newly planted.
This is my house. My very first one.
I grew up in a trailer court, in a brown and white double wide. Most of my memories were good ones, but it was not the best place to raise a child; my parents were damaged people trying their best. Storms were terrifying in such a home, as were the needles we’d find around such a neighborhood. I did not get it until I had my own kids, but I can only imagine how panicked my mom was, having her child bring her a used needle. One that her child found in the back yard, during the mid-1980’s.
I always wanted to live in a real house, like the rich kids. To have Guess jeans instead of the Guess socks my mom splurged for one holiday. To have a birthday party someplace cool, with a store-bought cake and delivery pizza instead of frozen. Trees in the yard.
When I was 11, wandering around the neighborhood unsupervised as 80’s kids did, my friends and I discovered that behind a privacy fence were two large apple trees. I’d seen apple trees, always behind fences. On my way to the pool, walking from grandma’s house was home where the apple tree always seemed loaded, its branches dipping green gold right on the other side of the fence next to the sidewalk. I could have reached over and grabbed one, but I wasn’t raised a thief. I always imagined a kid like me would be thrown in jail if I even dared.
These newly discovered apple trees were also behind a fence. A solid one. It was a white fence, looked like stucco or concrete. Yet there was no gate. I could sneak right in. The trees were tucked in the backyard of what was a likely an old and neglected business of some sort. Junk shop? Not sure, in any case, we never saw anyone in the janky back lot, although we were sure it was private property. We thought we were so sneaky. Never being caught, (more likely left alone), we climbed the trees, eating our fill of apples. My favorite thing was to bang the apple against my knee and suck out the juice I made. I still do that with a fresh picked apple, once and a while.
It was comforting to escape pre-teen drama hiding in “my” apple tree. There was a game where you would twist the stem off an apple while reciting the ABC’s, and where the stem separated, that was the first letter of the name of the man you would one day marry.
The apple always predicted I would be the wife of John Taylor of Duran Duran.
~
A week or so ago, I shared three of the last apples with my kids and their Dad. At the time I made a little speech about how these were the final apples ever from that double apple tree because of the damn bunnies and all that. The kind of convo a mom has about things she cares about and the others just nod along and roll their eyes as it isn’t their thing.
This past Tuesday I picked my youngest son up from work to drop him off at his place.
son: Mom, will the apple seeds from your apples actually grow a tree?
me: Well, yes and no, The tree is grafted. You’ll get apples but probably not the same kind of apples you ate.
son: Ok, I saved the seeds of your apples.
me: Well, if you want a cool experiment you should plant the seeds, grow a tree. See what kind of apples you get. I bet you can find a spot in your yard if you ask...
son: I saved them for you, I want you to grow the tree.
me: Oh, well, I’ll see if I can make some room somewhere. That is so sweet, that you saved the seeds.
son: I didn’t want the tree to die for nothing. I want the tree to live on.
He’s more like his mom than he thinks he is.
Thank you for reading my summer book report What My Apple Tree Means to Me.