"The Peach Tree"

The peach tree started life at a tree nursery amid questions of its paternity.  No one questioned that it was there, but they didn’t know from where the seed had come.  The pot in which it was growing had been located near the outermost greenhouse and had not been found until the little seedling was about 8 inches tall.  Some guessed that some wayward squirrel had planted it, but no one really knew (or really cared).  The daughter of the nurseryman ended up using the seedling in a science project; it was later sold with a tag that read “ Peach, parent stock unknown”.

       The peach tree was bought buy an elderly lady on a fixed income and unceremoniously planted in her back yard.  The lady became ill with a chronic condition and was told to spend most of her time indoors.  The peach tree spent the next years growing without any particular care.  It was never fertilized, except for the birds that nested in its branches. It was never pruned.  It was never treated for bugs – the birds took care of that for the most part.  It pretty much grew wild those first few years, but was full of leaves that raised themselves toward the Sun.

       When the lady died, her children decided to sell her house.  They realized that they needed to clean up around the house, so they hired a landscaping business to get her yard and gardens in order.  A young man was told to clear away the tangled brush and weeds from one particular part of the yard.  While he was doing his job, he came upon the peach tree.  His boss told him to just chop it down, but the young man figured that he might be able to use it.  He asked his boss if he could have it and his boss said he could.  The young man dug up the peach tree and put it in a yellow bucket.  He poured some water in the bucket and placed it in the shade of an old oak tree until he was ready to go home.

       After work, the young man took the peach tree in the yellow bucket to his mother’s house in the country.  He transplanted it near an old fence near the back of her property.  He fertilized it with some rich manure and gave it a good shower of water.  The peach tree seemed to thrive.  It grew a few feet, straight and tall.  The next spring for the first time it flowered.

       The flowers of the peach tree crowned its upper branches.  Bees buzzed around them every morning.  However, the season had come early, causing havoc with all the blooming fruit trees in the area.  There was an intense cold snap that killed almost every little blossom on the tree and the bees didn’t visit the tree anymore that year.  A few of the blossoms sprouted into little peaches – fuzzy and yellow. But before the little peaches could mature, mildew set in and they all fell from the tree.  Some of its twigs dried out and snapped off.  Tufts of lichens grew out of some of its branches.  Winter came again and the peach tree once again went dormant.

       The following spring, a lady in a white van came around.  She busied herself all over the property.  She made it finally to the peach tree, and began to snip off branches.  She sawed off some branches, clipped some dead twigs away, and picked off lichens and parasitic vines.  She sprayed various formulations onto its branches.  She rooted around the base of the tree, turning crystalline compounds into the soil.  She then laid a thick circle of mulch around the base of the peach tree.   Few blooms and no peaches occurred that year, but the peach tree was verdant and tall. 

       Finally one spring, the peach tree burst into bloom; its branches waved with billowing clouds of pink blossoms.  Weeks later, the branches of the peach tree heaved under the weight of bushels of juicy peaches.  People gathered and picked the luscious fruit, singing and buzzing around like bees around a hive.  Laughter filled the air as the juice of peaches ran down chins.  Pie and cobbler recipes were shared; the topic of what makes the best peach ice cream was debated. Soon people left, carrying away baskets of fresh peaches and twirling little twigs of peach leaves with their fingers.

       A mild rain came later that day and washed away some dust and traces of errant peach juice.  Droplets fell from the tips of leaves and the peach tree grew.