My orchard

 Back in the days of youthful wonder, I reached deep into my bank of memories and recalled a world when the small things that brought joy stayed with me until they were put on paper for everyone to see.

Mike 2025

I had my own orchard growing up. Juicy plums and red apples, pears, and crabapples nobody cared much for. Rows of trees I would climb to check out the progress but never hurrying it as the reward was in the waiting and just the right moment when I heard a slight thud as the first ripe plum hit the ground. I'd climb down and wipe the plum on an already dirty t-shirt until the deep purple fruit shined like a new Chevy.

The seasons played an essential part in my orchard. The winter months meant bare trees and no fruit. Springtime brought apple blossoms and rain to nourish the bounty that waited just a few weeks ahead. The summer months meant my favorite plums and pears, which I ate until my stomach hurt, and Autumn gave me the most delicious apples mom used for apple pies and turnovers and the best applesauce in the world.

As decades passed, I grew older, as did the trees in my orchard. Eventually, I moved away but returned as a man to visit that old house I grew up in and the rows of fruit trees that now stand old and tired, much like myself. They don't bear fruit anymore and will soon be nothing more than a memory that one winter storm will knock to the ground from which they came.

I took one last walk through the rows of trees, smelling the fruits that were there only in memory, saying goodbye to a young boy's quest for a purple plum he would polish on his T-shirt until it shined like a new Chevy, and above all, a young boy's adventures watched by his mom, looking out at her son collecting fruit in a dirty T-shirt filled with the fruits of his love.

Mike 2025