Word: trees
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Once the obsession takes hold, it becomes clear that while gardening may be many things for many people, dirt cheap it ain't. Among the quickest ways to run through a fortune is to approach the garden with the eye of a connoisseur. "Trees are my 87th collection," admits Louis Meizel, who, with his wife Susan, owns a SoHo art gallery and a 3 1/2-acre Long Island farm. "As with all our collections, our goal is to put together the best of each kind in the world." They have spent about $100,000 thus far, in part because they...
Consider for a moment the blessings of the apple tree. First of all, it is beautiful, not with the upright pride of the pine or maple but with a gnarled and twisted strength that implies the stoic wisdom of many gales survived. And it flowers every spring, with a glowing white fragrance that attracts the inquiries of the honeybee. Once its leaves are out, it provides shelter for the larks and thrushes that sing from its branches. In due time, the fading flowers turn into apples, offering a thousand fulfillments: apple pie, apple cake, applesauce, apple cider, apple butter, apple...
Arnold Schoenberg, trying to explain why George Gershwin had been a natural composer, said that a true artist is like an apple tree, and when he feels the need, he bursts into flower without ever thinking about the market price of apples. Conversely, it would seem that an apple tree is a work of art, a rhapsody in green and white. And it grows -- this is the miracle -- from a little brown seed no more than half an inch long, of which there are half a dozen inside every apple core that you throw into the garbage pail...
Like Martin Luther (or somebody) -- richly aware that the world might end tomorrow -- I keep planting apple seeds and watching to see how they grow. Some never germinate at all, some pop up about an inch and then slowly shrivel. But there stands outside my window one apple tree that was once a seed and is now more than twice as tall as I am. All it took me to grow it was about 15 years of my life...
Almost every time I look at that tree, I say to myself one of the things that a man most wants to say: "I made that." I know this is not really true. God made it. Or it made itself. But I helped. I planted the seed in the ground. I watered it. I watched over it and admired its blind, thrusting determination to be and to grow. And that is all most of us can do for most of the things or the people we care about...