It was the time of year when the stores in Sacramento brought in trees and plants, and you could not go anywhere without seeing rows of greenery, bags of bulbs, bare root trees, and lawn seed. I know a lot of these items look good in the store and are purchased by people who know nothing about gardening. But, their intentions as gardeners are good, so you have to give them credit for that. Due to most of the stores’ return policies, I’ve seen plenty of dead and dying plants sitting in carts parked near Customer Service and waiting for a final trip to the dumpster. I also know there are plenty of disappointed gardeners out there who wanted landscaping right out of Sunset and Home and Garden.
As I shopped for what I had written on my shopping list, my then boyfriend caught up with me and placed a plastic bag with dirt and twigs into the cart. I began to laugh. It was a loud, snorting laugh which had other shoppers pausing to stare at me.
“Are you serious? Those are twigs, and they’ll never grow. You get that in the ground, and it’s gonna die.” I added cruelly, “What a waste of money,” I didn’t see any buds or signs of new growth. The stick tree didn’t stand a chance because to me, it was dead.
He shrugged, and we continued shopping. I knew that shrug. It meant he had made up his mind and was keeping the tree. He wasn’t going to be talked out of it.
Once we were home, I watched him pick a place in the front yard as a new home to the stick tree. As he dug a hole in the front yard and planted the stick tree, I could have picked up a shovel and help him dig, but I didn’t offer to help because I wasn’t going to invest my time in something dead. As the year went by, he faithfully watered the stick tree, and by the following summer, there were three plums on the tree.
I admit I am not a Master Gardener, but I thought I could pick out a dead tree when I saw one. I guess bare root can fool you. I didn’t expect the tree to live, but it did. It seemed to thrive in the Sacramento weather. Before long, its branches stretched over the corner of the house and towards the fence separating our front yard from the neighbor’s.
“Fooled you, Farm Girl,” it seemed to say as its branches pushed towards the sky.
For the next two years, the tree put out enough fruit to give away. Each year, before the Fourth of July, our guests brought home paper sacks filled with plums. The birds got their share. I remember picking plums off the ground so the snails wouldn’t get them. I still do. As I counted, there were as much plums on the ground as the ones harvested.
I didn’t care for the taste of the fruit until last year, but we recruited my mom, and she came over every Fourth of July and made plum jam. I liked to use the jam in a mixture of orange juice and mango chutney, and then poured it over the Easter ham when I baked it. Sometimes, I poured the same mixture over roast chicken. It was too good for toast.
So the tree continues to grow, and the branches tower over me. Sometimes, I’ll prune it, but this year, I went with his wishes and let it grow.
No matter what season it is, I look at that tree and see nothing but growth. And I think of the guy I finally married 4 years ago after 7 years of indecision. He had put a lot of faith in a stick tree and stuck to what he believed in. But there was something more than that. I noticed he was the one who takes the time to look at the sky, the clouds and the mountains in the distance. He appreciates a lot of things people take for granted.
I finally decided to get over myself and this insecurity about giving marriage a second try. Who wants to admit the growth of a stick tree was one of reasons?
Happy Anniversary, Jack. And Happy Fourth of July.
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