wannabeherbal's Blog

The apple of my . . . garden.
Jul 2, 2007 | 8:23 AM PST
Tags: life , apple trees , wonderment

    This is it: the final countdown has begun.  My wife is being induced tomorrow morning, so hopefully, by tomorrow evening at the latest, I'll be a father.  All of the preparations for the baby (whose name will be released to the world as soon as she's born) have reminded me repeatedly of the beautifully cyclical pattern of life.  I have thought about how it must have been for my parents, back before I (their first-born) was born.  The same feelings my wife and I are currently experiencing were no doubt also at work in them.  I've thought about how it must have been for my grandparents - expecting my dad as their first.  It's been amazing for me to think about the past with life itself as my vantage point.  At some point in the lives of every biological parent, they have been in my shoes, and now I join the ranks.

    The circular nature of life is one of the things I treasure about gardening too.

    When I was a kid, we would go apple picking.  I can remember with great detail one tree in particular.  It's branches were ideal for climbing.  Once I had managed to scramble up to the lowest of it's branches (which were probably only about four feet up, but you have to give me some credit.  I was only about 7 at the time), the limbs that led to the summit of the tree were arranged in a perfect staircase.  At the pinnacle of this 20-ish foot tree, I could perch comfortably and munch away a happy hour.  I've thought a great deal about that tree as I've grown up.  I've never forgotten the taste of the apples picked for the topmost branches, where I imagined only I could reach.  I reminisce nearly every time I eat a particularly tasty apple.

    About a month and-a-half ago, my wife had given me an apple with my sandwich for lunch.  It was the best apple I had eaten in a long time.  I saved the core in the ziploc baggie that had contained my pb&j, intending to plant it when I got home.  I wasn't sure if anything was going to happen.  After planting it, I began to wonder if maybe the growers of the apple had somehow engineered their apples to produce invalid seed as a way of guarding their product.  Of course, I told myself, that was ridiculous.  I continued to water the pot of dirt faithfully, and sure enough up came the tiniest of sprouts, Followed a couple of weeks later by another.

    I am constantly amazed at the sureness with which plants come into being.  So fragile, yet somehow, unafraid.

    The taller of my apple seedlings is now about 2.5 inches tall and magnificent already.  I know that the odds of these new trees' ancestry going back to the same tree I climbed as a child are stacked astronomically against me, but I'd like to think that they're at least distantly related.  I hope that some day my children and grandchildren will enjoy climbing to the tallest bows of these trees, picking a perfect fruit and munching away many a happy hour.