What Peach Blossoms are Teaching Me About Courage, Seasons and Pruning Words
Was Anais Nin Right About the Risk to Bloom?
Around February 21st, the orchardists in my neighborhood began their season of pruning. I walked past messy orchards one day, full of bare branches barely beginning to set buds. The next day, these Palisade peaches were pruned, leaving straight red branches, some forked, some singles, all over the ground.
I usually walk “to the pears and back”, shorthand to tell Dad where I’m going and how long I’ll be gone. It’s a 20-minute walk if I don’t stop too often for photos. Sometimes longer. I walk faster when it’s too cold to pull off my mittens for photo-snapping.
The pears were being pruned too. The day before I had seen one of the pruners sitting in his sedan, parked off the road, warming up, eating a sandwich before pruning some more. Today, no pruners in sight but plenty of prunings on the ground. Greener branches, longer. I plan to pick branches up after I go all the way to the corner of G-Road and turn back.
I want to bring them inside, put them into a vase, see if they’ll sprout like we used to do with forsythia and pussy willows. I pick up three or four branches, saving room in my hands for peach branches. I fill both hands as I make my way home.
I stop in our own orchard, the mere 16 left of our 330 trees. Pruned back to the nubs last October so that no fruit would grow, no branches would need spraying or coddling moth mating-interruptor twist ties, because the trees (and we) are too old for orcharding. I look to see if there are still any early signs of apple-blossom buds defying the rules and planning to sprout anyway. I see a few, and the contrast with clear turquoise skies is too much to resist. I take a few photos—“the Before”—in case I might find blossoms later this spring, like the few apples we found in October that had completely gone under our radar all season.
A neighbor drives by and maybe wonders why I am looking so closely at such closely pruned trees. He might being wondering why bother keeping sixteen trees at all if you’re not growing fruit? The answer is we wanted two rows of trees for their beauty and border. Maybe Mom couldn’t bear to let all the trees die that year she and Dad decided to uproot 314 of the rest? It was too much to bear losing every single one. Maybe that’s why I wanted to bring home these branches—because I miss them, too.
The first spring we moved here—in 2001, the apples were pruned somewhat late, in full gorgeous pink bloom. We drove the tractor for the first time through the rows, slowly loading the flatbed with branches still being kissed by the bees. I called it the prettiest firewood I’d ever seen. And their glorious aroma, so heavenly. The hard work, the rest of the season, almost hell. No, just earth. It was hard and worth it. Cherries. Berries. Peaches. Pears. Apples. Grapes. Now pasture grass.
This spring marks the third without mom in the flesh. I’ve lost track of how many years we’ve gone without growing and knowing our own peach’s flesh. But I’m back in the house, having moved in with Dad in December.
But back to the bare branches I hoped would bring early blossoms to our kitchen.
I take them to the picnic table on the east-facing patio, outside the kitchen. I go looking for my pruning shears but only found Mom’s, long overdue for sharpening. Mine have been lost to my move and will surely someday reappear, but it’s too chilly to bother looking for them now.
I go looking for vases on the fruit cellar shelves, bring back one white-glazed with purple iris images and the peach-colored cut glass. I cut short and long stems from the branches so they’ll fit. The extra tall green stalks go in the taller white vase. The cluster of pinkish red peach branches go in the heavy cut glass.
I bring them inside to the kitchen. The cats are intrigued. For days they defy rules to jump on the table and smell the bare branches. “Outside” must smell good. Two weeks later I’ll still be finding single white cat hairs clinging to the blossoms on the branches, proof that Snowflake spent some of her night prowling and smelling the buds and the blossoms.
On day seven, one bud appears to be growing, getting fatter, shifting from reddish-brown to the hint of pink petals within. By day ten, the first blossom opens! Ta da!! By noon, two more pop. By day twelve, even more. One morning I swear they look like pink popcorn, some kernels, some popped, some about to explode. By day thirteen, the peaches are fading (“spent blossoms, priceless”) and the pears are starting to burst.
Some mornings, Dad asks, “I wonder if they’ll set peaches?” I remind him that without bees it’s more than unlikely, and besides that, there’s no actual sap, no roots, no ground, no tree. I think he was joking.
It’s so fun every day to wake up and go downstairs to see how many more may have bloomed. I bring my phone because I’m documenting their journey on my fleeting Instagram Story. My daily posts make me happy, like how I shared the progress of the amaryllis a few years in a row throughout Christmas.
Why is it that I love forcing blossoms to bloom in mid-winter and spring?
Colorado. That’s why. Spring fever strikes long before Spring. March is our snowiest month (proof, the storm dumping three feet in Denver today, March 14th). April is windy, often cold. May it’s finally spring and suddenly summer, at least over here on the Western Slope of the Rockies.
By day number 13, I’m feeling the sorrow that these blossoms will never bear fruit. Guilt that I’d brought these branches inside, as if I’m to blame for peaches that will never be grown.
But remember, pruning is part of the process. Part of the plan. Not just for growing marketable fruit. For the health of the trees. There’s that orchard on G.4 Road that clearly hasn’t been pruned in a very long time. Those winter trees look like they’re choking, can’t breathe, and nobody seems to be planning to prune them. I feel sad for those trees.
I admire the branches full of blossoms and buds as I eat my toast and sip my coffee. What fun, this science experiment in observation, up close and personal, day by day. This feeds my soul, bringing pink flowers to bloom in our home.
I’m jumping the season and it’s okay. It’s a gift.
As the peach buds slow their momentum each day, some turn a pale brown. The veins in one petal appear as golden outlines on white, like butterfly wings emerging from a cocoon. The first blossom now begins to curl inward without fading, becoming again the bright pink of day one. I feel their lack of sap running. I sense the scar that must have formed at the end of the cut branch, no longer pulling in water.
I feel the impermanence of the blossoms and remember, this is how it’s supposed to be. Temporary beauty, fleeting flowers, seizing the day, carpe diem. Prepare us humans for letting go and also for appreciating presence. Being here in the moment.
Are these blossoms cruelly cut off from their source and their sap? If I had not brought them inside, these branches would have been flailed, the term for the pounding Flailing machines that smack down the branches, preparing them as compost so they replenish the ground beneath the trees with just enough branches for growing just enough fruit throughout summer.
If I had not brought these branches inside, their potential for blooming would have gone back into the ground. And that’s okay, too.
I think of my as-yet unwritten stories, or edited paragraphs, or chopping-blocked words. I wonder, were they cut off from Source, or properly pruned for the others to grow? I think of words like my first draft of 1532 on five pages that may or may not see the light of day on a blog (here they are!). I think of the words I might/should have written (or edited) for another story. Editing is not a bad thing, however painful.
Sometimes, it’s enough to divert my creative sap to singing the praises of peach blossoms. If I don’t do it today, I might never find the right flow to describe the details of these weeks.
I’m surprised that the pears are starting to pop now that the peaches are done, as they will do in real life in another few weeks down the road.
There’s a season for everything, so they say. Then there’s the line by Anais Nin:
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
I question her projecting some pain on the bud. While watching these peach buds these weeks, I’m not noticing pain. I’m noticing the easeful unfolding, the pacing of pinks, whites and red, the fading, the falling.
Did these blossoms risk blooming, or did they allow their own nature to unfold thanks to some water and warmth of the morning sunshine? On the peach trees outside, so many blossoms will never become peaches. Their duty is simply to bloom and feed bees. The wind will continue to prune, and some orchardists will go through the rows picking off set baby peaches to ensure that enough will grow big, not crowding, competing.
Do peaches need courage to bloom? Perhaps not, but do I? What if I took a cue from these forced blossoms? Oh dear, that word ‘forced.’ They showed up early for me, my dad and our cats. They were invited to bloom, set into water and sunlight. They might have been cut off from real sap, but I didn’t do that (that was their destiny).
Did you know that peach buds grow on last year’s new growth? It’s okay to prune. It’s okay to discern. It’s okay to choose from abundance and say enough is enough. These blossoms showed me the force of Nature, the miracles of new growth.
I woke up one morning last week with this quote by Meister Eckhart:
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
And I’ll add from Dag Hammarskjöld:
“For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.”
P.S. Then yesterday, I walk a different route and come upon the neighbor’s apricot tree, covered in buds and few blossoms. It’s almost a month too early, as usual—these brave apricots going first, sometimes freezing from cold April frost, no crops to be had. What will happen this year? Time will tell!
P.P.S. I did prune quite a few words in this post, but kept just as many, added more, so that I could share the beauty of Palisade springtime with you today. xoxo
Thanks Shelly.
Gorgeous, Shelly. I enjoyed the blossom in your words, the paring and the pruning--and the twin stories of family and writing underneath. And this, especially:
"We drove the tractor for the first time through the rows, slowly loading the flatbed with branches still being kissed by the bees. I called it the prettiest firewood I’d ever seen. And their glorious aroma, so heavenly. The hard work, the rest of the season, almost hell. No, just earth. It was hard and worth it. Cherries. Berries. Peaches. Pears. Apples. Grapes. Now pasture grass.
This spring marks the third without mom in the flesh. I’ve lost track of how many years we’ve gone without growing and knowing our own peach’s flesh. But I’m back in the house, having moved in with Dad in December."
Thank you.
Cliff