The cherry tree’s final gift to us that year was logs to fuel our winter fire - but on this golden evening, I recall other gifts found in her branches. I hoarded a few bags of the frozen maroon orbs and we savored them in a Christmas pie. The cherries were especially sweet that summer - or at least that’s how I remember them now. My teenage sons climbed high to snatch fruit from swooping birds as I slipped handfuls into a bucket for preserving. The neighbor girls raided her branches, harvesting enough for their mother to make a tart. As the blooms faded and dropped, the cherries appeared and seemed to just keep coming, creating a canopy of red, green, and brown over our heads. She fairly shimmered in the springtime sunshine. That last spring, the cherry tree boasted a glorious crown of blossoms. The final season of her fruit-bearing was her finest. Rot was weakening her trunk and there was a danger that she would fall on the nearby barn - but I begged my husband for one more summer and, as I tilled and planted the garden, I gratefully watched her awaken from her winter slumber. Talk of cutting down the cherry tree came at the kitchen table early that spring.

The beautiful, gnarled, seeping tree that stood guard over my garden all the 20 years we’ve lived here finally succumbed to the rot that was eating her from within, and on a blustery fall day, she was taken down by a gust of wind. Looking over my shoulder, I remember that for the second year, I work at this task without the companionship of our ancient cherry tree.

Rains came late to our valley and have transformed the dried crust of soil I worried over in July into a verdant bed sprouting every weed known to man - plus a few tomatoes, peppers, onions, green beans, and sunflowers.Īs I harvest the crop which tomorrow will become jars of salsa, I can’t help but notice that something is missing. The garden that so inspired me in the spring is overrun by late-summer weeds.

Ingrid cherrytree