One Apple Tree Isn't an Orchard

I have a thirty seven year-old apple tree on my property. When I was viewing the house, I looked into the backyard and beheld this beautiful tree with pretty little green apples sticking out like gooseberries and I thought, ‘Doesn’t that look like one of the trees in the garden of Eden?’ Little did I realize that it was the tree that made everybody die.

The previous owners let the apples fall on the ground, so they got wormy. That Fall I had to pick up thousands of these little, tiny, miniscule, puny, midget apples off the ground and I couldn’t even use them for anything! Then, even though I had originally fallen in love with the shape of this tree, I got out the pruning hooks and hacked this tree to, what I felt was, bits. I had never pruned a tree before, but I took off every branch I thought it could spare.

I felt cruel. It wasn’t the tree’s fault it was wormy … really wormy.

This spring, I was doing dishes and looked out my kitchen window to see my apple tree as white a tree from heaven. The panic rose up in my throat. No. NO! NONONONONONONONONO! I ran outside in a feverish haze. NOOOO! I had other plans that day, but I had put everything on hold to hack those evil branches off before they became fruit that was rotten before it hit the ground. I must have looked like a monster. Pretty white apple blossoms and I was chopping them off by the sleeve.

It’s really disheartening to have to cut almost all the branches off a tree only to know that you’ll have to do it year in and year out for the rest of its life. My neighbor keeps offering me his chain saw to take the whole thing down in one blow. Can you see me with a chain saw? Although everyone knows how much I like power drills. Come on – honk if you liked the power drills in my book Rose Red.

Anyway, in the end, even though I covered my grass with decapitated tree limbs – I came out the victor. Total victory. Seriously, because I was ruthless with the pruning shears, the tree had fewer apples on it. This meant that the apples were bigger. Good. And then, when I noticed I had a little friend who liked to eat them off the ground, I resolved to pick all of them and toss them in the trash. With a ladder, I got the whole thing done in one hour. Very good.