Peaches-To-Be

Tonight, I’m thinking about potential. Isn’t it interesting how we often don’t see our own…but we can see it in others so clearly?

Everything in life has it….you just have to know where to look. Take the picture below... and notice the little misshapen tree in the foreground:



This sad little tree is actually a peach tree...in my front yard. It’s one of the few things the previous owners got right. If I had my way, I’d have a whole grove of fruit trees….what could be better than walking out the door and grabbing something that Mother Nature's already prepared for you to eat…it’s like going back to being six years old and having your mom hand you your lunch for school. Like pre-packaged love…to go.

Anyway, this little tree has unlimited potential. Even though I’ve neglected to fertilize it, spray it for insects, or check it for some strange tree-disease that begins with an “R” that I’d read about on Google over the winter. See, this little tree doesn’t know it needs all these things, so it’s just doing what comes naturally…it’s growing peaches:



Actually, LOTS of peaches. Now, I realize that there will probably be a selective course to how many of these little babies actually make it to the ripening process…but still. You’ve got to admire its spunk.

(And yes, I’ll be looking for recipes for peach-everything come summer, so keep this in mind.)

A few years ago, I tried to grow a lemon tree in my incredibly light-filled living room. This little bitty tree and I went through two years of me attempting to nurture it and it doing its best to just stay alive.



I know it’s a bit blurry, but I was practically shaking with joy that it made it past the green stage and was starting to actually look like a lemon. (Notice the artfully, yet understated way I’d piled up the wood mulch to act as a “crutch” so the poor thing didn’t just flop over and DIE from the exhaustion of holding itself up.)

It fully ripened and we had a big ceremony, followed by a huge debate as to what final purpose our singular home-grown-home-ripened lemon should have. I remember Taylor voted to squeeze it on shrimp cocktail…Connor wanted to squeeze it in some Pepsi. I recall my protests of “Stop talking about squeezing it, for Heaven’s sake! Is that all you guys think about?”…for I’d become quite protective of my little charge. In the end, we cut it three ways and everyone did their own thing, with me opting to save each and every seed (for future generations of healthy stock) and eventually making the world’s smallest glass of lemonade. So, it got squeezed anyway. The plant died the next week and I just didn’t have the heart to give it another go.

I love my fruit trees. They remind me that anything is possible…especially if you don’t realize that you’re attempting the impossible.