grafted trees

Look, Grandpa! The tree’s broken!

The sweet seven-year-old, disheveled blonde hair flying into her eyes, spoke the momentous words without any idea of the turmoil they would bring. Within seconds, she was standing on a stepladder pulling little green fruit from the branches she could reach. I almost didn’t remember to warn her of the impending stomachache. Almost.

I was the one who felt as if he had been punched in the stomach.

The tree will die. It is inevitable.

I am sad.

It’s really not my tree. It doesn’t change how I feel about it.

The Lovely Lady and I are returning to her roots. For nearly seventy years, the old house and surrounding property have been part of her family, her parents having moved in the house within a few years of being married.

We’ve spent several months breathing new life into the house, with the property needing as much resuscitation as the building. Days, we’ve spent clearing overgrowth and dead limbs, along with more than a few saplings which had poked their branches up where they weren’t wanted.

But the old apple tree, with its gnarled limbs and bowed trunk—looking for all the world like an ancient fellow bent by years of backbreaking work—the old apple tree was meant to stay forever.

Forty years ago, it was. Four decades back, this summer, I first tasted the fruit from that tree. Sitting at the table, long hair to my shoulders and skinny as one of the branches of the tree, I ate—gobbled down, really—the serving of apple crisp set before me by the Lovely Young Lady’s mother.

Before the meal was done, I asked for another serving, and then another. Slightly tart, yet pleasingly sweet, the crunch of the crumbly crust almost a surprise as one chewed, it was a treat to be savored and assigned to the memory banks for a lifetime.

I expected a repeat performance later this summer when the little green apples—the ones the neighborhood deer herd can’t reach from their hind legs—have turned to shades of yellows and reds.

My granddaughter is right. The tree is broken. An errant wind, whipped up in a rainstorm a week or so ago, has twisted the gnarled, bowed trunk and opened a crack that, as an old friend used to say, you could sling a cat through.

I feel as if an old friend has been told he has mere weeks to live. The thought of losing this old companion is more than I want to contemplate, but still, my mind mulls over the future.

That night, my daughter assures me, the children went to bed with nary a sign of a bellyache. I’m the one who is sick to his stomach.

I suppose it’s laughable. I could understand an uninvolved individual chortling at the idea.

It’s a ratty old tree! Who cares if it dies? Plant another one there. Or—better yet—build a fire circle with a pit. Parties are better than apple crisp any day!

It’s not even my tree.

Well, in a way, I suppose it is. You might call it the family tree.

I know. Puns aren’t universally loved. I love them, though.

You see, the Lovely Lady can’t remember a day when that apple tree wasn’t there. I don’t know if her dad planted it or not, but he certainly tended it for decades, ensuring it would bear fruit and be there for the foreseeable future. In a way, you might say, it was his legacy.

A legacy.

Better than money or belongings, this thing left behind, this family tree, carries with it special powers. I look at it and am carried back forty years to apple crisp and fresh applesauce, straight from the Foley Food Mill. The Lovely Lady goes back another decade and remembers climbing the old tree with her siblings, each in their own quadrant, to pick and eat the not-so-sweet fruit to their heart’s content.

Years of family history have gone by, and the tree that is not mine has seen every minute of those years.

But, this I remember and take heart: The legacy will not die with the old tree.

Memories live in our hearts. Long after that old tree is gone, I will, in my mind, taste the delicious desserts made from its fruit.

The legacy left behind is so much more important than trees that perish in the storm or money that is soon exhausted in the marketplace.

I was grafted into her family tree decades ago; although once a stranger, I was never treated as anything but a son and brother. Her legacy is mine, and vice versa.

Funny. Suddenly, I’m thinking of that other family tree I’ve been grafted into.

You know the one I mean.

We’ve been grafted into God’s tree, to be a part of His family forever. (Romans 11:17)

Wild, unproductive branches, we.

Once, we were.

No longer. With roots that go deep, this tree’s legacy is ours forever.

Even though it was never our tree, to begin with.

What a gift!

How would we not carry on the legacy and share it freely?

Carry on His legacy. Share it freely. Share on X

I’m still sad about the apple tree. Perhaps, I’ll plant another one.

Future generations may need to taste that apple crisp again.

I know I can still taste it.

And, it’s still good.

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
(William James ~ American philosopher ~ 1842-1910)

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
(Psalm 1:3 ~ KJV)

The little towhead stood at the curb, library book in hand, looking first up one way and then down the other. Seeing no cars, he trotted across the blacktop on the naked soles of his bare feet.

Once safely across the street, the scruffy boy wandered, aimlessly some would have thought, along the row of citrus trees.

It wasn’t aimless. He had a target in mind, one specific tree with the sweetest fruit in the little orchard. Three trees from the end, he stopped and ducked under the low-hanging limbs, heavy with brightly colored oranges.

No low-hanging fruit for him. This kid had a spot in mind—one in which he could spend the next couple of hours in his quiet and private pursuit of two of his favorite activities: Reading and eating oranges.

Of course he knew he shouldn’t eat oranges while reading library books. The day would come when he would face the consequences of that transgression, but it wouldn’t be on this day.

Tucking the book inside his shirt, he shinnied up the bole of the tree until he found the little nest he had arranged the day before. Sitting on one sturdy limb, feet propped against another, and his back resting against the narrowing trunk, he settled in for an afternoon of delicious adventure with Tom Swift and his fantastic inventions.

But first, he reached out for an orange. Hmmm—there weren’t as many within easy reach as there had been yesterday. Oh well. He sighted a couple in front of him, and twisting his neck a little, a bunch more right behind. He snagged the two in front. The others would come later.

Was there ever anything quite so delicious as a sweet, freshly picked orange, eaten while sitting in the tree from which it came?

The two oranges were fantastic. So sweet and such a burst of flavor—he sighed with content and was immediately lost in his book. The second of the two followed the first without him even thinking about it.

Somewhere around chapter three, just as Tom and Bud were headed for the rocket launchpad, the juice-drizzled urchin realized he was empty handed except for the book he held.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the yellow-orange orbs hanging above and behind him. Reaching back and plucking it handily, he began to remove the peel.

It felt different. The other fruit had been smooth, with a thin skin. This one was rough and pebbly and had a thick layer of that useless white pith under the orange outer skin.

Well, at least it wasn’t rotten. There weren’t any holes to indicate wasps had bored into it. It came from the tree with the sweetest fruit he could remember finding. He wasn’t going to let a little rough peel detract from his enjoyment.

By this time, Tom and his friends were in Outer Space, orbiting the earth and working on an experiment which, no doubt, would explode and start a chain reaction that only Tom’s newest invention could halt.

The kid with orange peel under his finger nails bit into the orange wedge he had just freed from the strange peel.

Oh! Wow! Sour! Triple Wow!

He couldn’t spit the pulpy mass out of his mouth quickly enough. It was horrendous!

Tom Swift and his precarious mission forgotten, the little sun-bleached blond head swiveled around to view the other fruit behind him.

Every single one of the oranges back there were the same. Sour oranges!

He looked down below to see where that branch grew from. Surely it was a different tree, sprung up beside the good one.

It wasn’t.

From the same tree those fantastically delicious, sweet fruit had been taken grew the hideous, mouth-puckering sour bits of vegetation. Of course, at his young age, he had no knowledge of tree grafts and how they could grow out so the sweet fruit would be produced on one side of the graft and the sour on the other. He wouldn’t have cared one bit.

All the unhappy kid knew was that he was going to find another spot to finish his book.

He also needed another sweet orange as quickly as possible—to take the horrible taste of that last one from his palate.

The boy is a man now, long past his youth.

He doesn’t climb orange trees anymore.

Still, he does find trees that yield both good and bad fruit. It seems there are more around than ever before.

Sometimes, it’s his own tree. Sweet and sour.

It’s no surprise that we’re talking about different kind of fruit, is it?

I’m not the first one to write about this strange fruit.

Blessings and curses from the same tree. Sweet and bitter water from the same spring of water. (James 3:9-12)

Our world resounds with the words.

Love mixed with hatred. Concern juxtaposed with disdain.

Sacred and profane. From the same source.

It ought not to be.

Did you know that an orange tree which begins to produce sour oranges with the sweet will soon produce nothing but sour oranges? It becomes useless to the farmer.

Useless. Fit only to be uprooted and replaced.

Even Tom Swift didn’t have a cure for that.

Only the Creator can change the heart.

Of the tree.

And the man.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
(Psalm 103:11-12 ~ NIV)

He's Taken Leave

Random wanderings with Paul Phillips

Not My Tree

Sacred & Profane