Chatting With the Apple Tree

Apple tree (Margo D. Beller)

We have passed the point on the calendar marked "First day of summer" although from a meteorological standpoint, summer began on June 1. There are two hummingbirds at the feeder. I know this because frequently they show up at the same time and one chases the other off. Because they look alike, I can't tell which is the Alpha and which is the Beta. However, one does tend to squeek when it flies off or is disturbed. I heard it from the tree this morning as I was picking apples.

Most apples grow in late summer into autumn. I have one tree that blooms in late April or early May and puts out fruit a few weeks later. Some years, such as last year, drought conditions prompted few flowers and thus fewer apples for me to pick. This year, with all the rain, there was an overabundance of flowers and now you can see the apples growing.

Last year I brought one to a farmer I know and he identified the apple as a sort of Mcintosh, although these are usually ready to be picked in the fall, too. But my apples are usually ready in late June into July. I know this when I see squirrels climbing up, grabbing one and running off with it.

Thus begins an annual routine. I go out with a bucket, pick up whatever the squirrel has dropped and then pick whatever apples look big enough to cook - ideally I'd like them redder but I am in a race against time here - before the deer can come and eat them. The other morning I had just done that when a big doe arrived and started browsing. I chased her off but she did not go willingly.

House wren in apple tree. (Margo D. Beller)

This is suburban life now. At one time deer were afraid of people. No longer.

I do this picking (or picking up) twice a day, in the early morning and at dusk. But judging by all the deer excrement under the tree, I can't get everything.

When we bought the house over 20 years ago, it had been standing at that point 30 years or so. The previous owner must've fancied himself a gardener because he put in five apple trees, a pear and a cherry. He also built up a small, terraced garden with railroad ties. However, he stopped taking care of it, then moved out ahead of a divorce and the ties rotted. Chipmunks nested beneath it. When we had work done on the house and surrounding property, the ties were removed.

However, the trees stayed. The cherry eventually rotted and I had three of the five apples taken down because the fruit was not usable to me but made a big mess in the yard thanks to the squirrels and deer. The fourth, a small tree and the same type as the one that remains, was killed by too much rubbing of antlers against it by young bucks.

Where one tree was removed is now a garden of ornamental grasses and other plants deer tend to leave alone. Where two others were are now planted a dogwood tree and my friend Spruce Bringsgreen. But I kept the last tree because the apples make good sauce or pies. It holds up the house wren box, where the adults are now shuttling back and forth to feed peeping young. It provides some shade. It is a place for birds to perch such as the hummingbird. During the flowering season, I discovered 14 cedar waxwings going after the bugs, or perhaps eating the petals.

But those apples do draw the squirrels and the deer.

Recently I sat outside on my patio, admiring this tree with its growing fruits. I had it trimmed a few years ago but now it is bushier than ever.

I am an old tree, she told me. I have to do much to protect myself and to protect my young. When I have too many, as this year, I must abort many of them while they are still small and hard. It can't be helped. I have to be able to bear more fruit next year and beyond. As you can see I have a gall on my trunk and an opening big enough for a chipmunk to sit in, but I keep going.

I had noticed all those little apples underfoot, I said. I guess a lot of trees do that. I notice the elm over there has dropped a lot of green seeds. I hope the squirrels and chipmunks will get to them later, when they have to be stored for winter.

I do not mind the birds in my upper branches, she continued. I do not mind the nest box you hang on my lower branch so you can watch the birds. I did not mind the yellow-bellied sapsucker that drilled little holes in a ring around my trunk for the sap last spring, the one you kept chasing off. It was trying to survive, too. I have withstood all that. 

I survived a hurricane, the one called Sandy. I have stood in deep snow and in fog and in heavy rain and in such heat that my leaves have turned brown and fallen before their time. I do what I must to survive.

I can understand that, I said. So do I.

What I do not like is you whacking me with a big stick every year, breaking off my branches and making the apples rain down before their time, she said.

I am sorry, I told her, but I am now past the age where I can climb trees or even stand on the upper part of a ladder to gently pick the ripe fruit. The squirrels are not so choosy, especially in those years where we have had high heat for days on end. The squirrels want a sweet drink and will ignore my water dishes for your apples.

I will remove the core and rot before using (Margo D. Beller)

And when they drop partially eaten apples, the chipmunks grab them, which is fine, but then the deer come, which is not. One deer is bad enough but the time I came out to find five of them was a horror. I once used an umbrella to hook your branches and pull them closer. Now, I admit, ever since I got the extension pole for another project, it has come in handy to bring down as many apples as possible at once.

But it is not as if your fruit goes to waste. I put the partially eaten ones into the corner of the yard, where I prefer the deer to poop than in the lawn under you. I throw out the really small or bad ones. I put the rest in the cellar and then, when I have the time, energy and inclination, I make pints and quarts of sauce I can freeze and use for months. I would love to compost the parts I don't use but I don't want a forest of apple trees to grow there.

You took down my child, she said.

Your child was small and destroyed by deer, I said. I would've loved to have had two of you for the apples and the shade, but what else could I do? I am trying to balance having something natural and pretty in my backyard with the new realities of suburban life, where wildlife I never would've imagined are showing up in the yard.

You know a bear was once in the neighboring tree, the one you took down, she said.

Yes, I do. That was the first time a bear visited, to my knowledge, many years before the visit that destroyed my bird feeder pole. I came out and found a large indentation in the ground, a lot of scat and broken branches. It is one of the reasons I later had that tree removed and put in my ornamental grass garden. You saw what a bear did to the pear tree over there.

Damaged pear tree (Margo D. Beller)

Yes, she said, I did, and I appreciated all the work you did to save it. It looks very healthy now. I hope a bear does not decide to climb me for my fruit. A 200-pound bear does a lot of damage to apple tree branches. But if it does, there is nothing much I can do about it. I am a tree. If I am struck down, I can only hope one of my seeds grows to keep my line going.

Do not worry, old tree, I said. As long as I can still get up in the morning and bend down to pick up dropped fruit and pull off apples before anything else can get to them, no bear will destroy you.

But we both know that in this life there are no guarantees, to anything.

No, she replied. There aren't.