We have an old cherry tree at the back corner of the yard that serves as a sort of sentinel of the garden. In the spring, its frothy white blooms are fleeting, gorgeous and ethereal.
There is a smaller twin of the tree a few feet away and on the other side of the fence that I suspect was a cherry pit that became a tree.
We have a love/hate relationship with this tree. It serves as a reminder of how I remember the back half of the garden to be when I was a kid. Unkempt, orchard-like and filled with fruit trees in various stages of disrepair. I don’t recall anyone ever pruning them or treating them for disease. The trees were scraggly and old, branches bent and twisted. I remember my mom, aunt and grandma making applesauce from the mountain of Gravenstein apples the old apple trees dropped. And helping them pick cherries on spring afternoons while they debated amongst themselves what type of cherries we were picking.
For now, we have kept this old giant tree. The birds love the fruit. And I love watching the robins, finches and scrub jays pulling the cherries from the tree and flying off with their sweet prize. For a few weeks, raccoons troop into the yard at night and feast.
But it’s also a messy tree. I spend a good portion of March and April weeding the thousands of pits that have sprouted in hopes of becoming a tree. Cherry roots run along just under the surface of the ground where suckers take hold. If you don’t notice and pull the suckers early, you will have hundreds of new plants in no time. Trying to plant shrubs or anything, really, in the cherry zone is a nightmare. One shovel in and more often than not, you hit a root just under the surface.
It stays. For now. A relic of the past. Messy. A reminder of this place before subdivisions surrounded us. When everything wasn’t neat and orderly and planned. I like knowing this tree provides food for the creatures we share this piece of the world with. So, for as long as I can still crouch down and pull out thousands of cherry starts each spring, it has a place here.
