Increasingly, there are days when I daydream of planting fruit trees.
Over the years, I've had the fortune of having access to private gardens and courtyards that have had a plethora of fruit trees. There are the friends and family who've lived on land where fruit trees existed (some of which they planted themselves). In England, the houses I lived in and visited all had fruit trees, even if just one lone apple tree, not to mention fruit bushes everywhere.
One of my favourite memories is of discovering a love apple tree in Lonavla, and plonking myself in the branches one whole morning, stuffing myself sick with dozens of a fruit which normally cost a pretty penny back in Bombay. I'd like to think I love that memory because it's a mixture of the large-village atmosphere of Lonavla as it was back then, the knowledge that this wonderfully warm summer morning held no threats of schoolwork, and the fact that I was on holiday away from the city. But I know it's mainly because I remember the delightfulness of crunching into dozens of sweet fruit, which had not been touched up or fake-ripened and were not bland.
I have a couple of fruit saplings now, but they're in pots. I tend to them, enjoying the few fruits they've already started giving, and hope I will be able to take them along in the next move. I could leave them behind to some little park here, but the gardeners don't seem to be too fussed and keep talking about quotas, which makes me angrier at the concept of planned gardens. And perhaps, even if they were enthused, I mightn't leave them behind.
Because I want to watch these trees grow. I want to see them age year by year, defying the winds and the rain and the sun and the horrible things in the air to keep getting a little wider, a little more hard-skinned. I want them to not be the nomads we're all increasingly becoming, to settle down in one spot and create a little bastion of oxygen and shade and coolness and colour and aroma and taste. I want them to be the little permanence I can return to, a little reminder of time and memory that will (hopefully) outlast me.
I want to plant apples and love apples, and pears and guavas, and peaches and nectarines, and plums and damsons and greengages, and oranges and sweet limes, and papayas, and mulberries and raspberries and gooseberries, and figs, and chikoo, and mangoes and mangoes and oh-so-many-mangoes. I want to wander the countryside to plant them wherever there's space and suitable conditions, and wherever somebody wants them. Call me Johnny Fruitseed.
And who knows, maybe some day, some kid might hoick themselves up into one of them branches and spend a lazy summer's day curiously watching to see just how far their tummy will swell and just how messy their clothes will get if they keep eating.
And who knows, maybe some day, I will too.
Over the years, I've had the fortune of having access to private gardens and courtyards that have had a plethora of fruit trees. There are the friends and family who've lived on land where fruit trees existed (some of which they planted themselves). In England, the houses I lived in and visited all had fruit trees, even if just one lone apple tree, not to mention fruit bushes everywhere.
One of my favourite memories is of discovering a love apple tree in Lonavla, and plonking myself in the branches one whole morning, stuffing myself sick with dozens of a fruit which normally cost a pretty penny back in Bombay. I'd like to think I love that memory because it's a mixture of the large-village atmosphere of Lonavla as it was back then, the knowledge that this wonderfully warm summer morning held no threats of schoolwork, and the fact that I was on holiday away from the city. But I know it's mainly because I remember the delightfulness of crunching into dozens of sweet fruit, which had not been touched up or fake-ripened and were not bland.
I have a couple of fruit saplings now, but they're in pots. I tend to them, enjoying the few fruits they've already started giving, and hope I will be able to take them along in the next move. I could leave them behind to some little park here, but the gardeners don't seem to be too fussed and keep talking about quotas, which makes me angrier at the concept of planned gardens. And perhaps, even if they were enthused, I mightn't leave them behind.
Because I want to watch these trees grow. I want to see them age year by year, defying the winds and the rain and the sun and the horrible things in the air to keep getting a little wider, a little more hard-skinned. I want them to not be the nomads we're all increasingly becoming, to settle down in one spot and create a little bastion of oxygen and shade and coolness and colour and aroma and taste. I want them to be the little permanence I can return to, a little reminder of time and memory that will (hopefully) outlast me.
I want to plant apples and love apples, and pears and guavas, and peaches and nectarines, and plums and damsons and greengages, and oranges and sweet limes, and papayas, and mulberries and raspberries and gooseberries, and figs, and chikoo, and mangoes and mangoes and oh-so-many-mangoes. I want to wander the countryside to plant them wherever there's space and suitable conditions, and wherever somebody wants them. Call me Johnny Fruitseed.
And who knows, maybe some day, some kid might hoick themselves up into one of them branches and spend a lazy summer's day curiously watching to see just how far their tummy will swell and just how messy their clothes will get if they keep eating.
And who knows, maybe some day, I will too.
3 comments:
Beautifully written. The bit about all of us being nomads these days was particularly touching.
Thank you. Some day ... you know?
That list! How I wish all the fruit trees could go equaly well in one place and climate.
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