I live in an urban apartment and I have a little balcony outside my living room
windows where people walk by. There is room by the railing for plants. I have
some small pots and two big ones. In one is a beautiful little pear tree and in
the other a grapevine. This summer the grapevine fell in love with the pear tree
and no matter how hard I tried to coax it to go along the railing it was
determined to entwine itself around the delicate limbs of the pear tree,
sometimes, I suspect, even at night while I slept to avoid my prying fingers.
Finally I gave up and let them have their fling. By August the pear tree was
looking quite bedraggled, what you could see of it beneath all those grape
leaves. Then some weird creepy creature started attacking the grape leaves and
leaving them tattered and brown. I knew if I cut the grapevine it would come
back from the roots next year even stronger. Otherwise the infestation would
probably spread and take out my little balcony garden.
So I heartlessly whacked the grapevine off at the base and then my helper and I
carefully disentangled it from the pear tree. The pear tree really looked ragged
but I could tell it was glad to be free.
A couple of weeks later I was out on my balcony and I saw something that blew my
mind. The pear tree had a blossom on it. In fact it had several blossoms and a
few new leaves. This just does not happen this time of year, not in Texas -
never. I have lived here most of my life and been very aware of the habits of
fruit trees and, believe me, this is unheard of.
Well, I didn’t say anything, I just watched. It’s been two weeks now and every
day more blossoms come out. The tree looks like a combination of the end of a
hard summer and the beginning of spring.
I took away the suffocating grapevine and the tree gave me a second blooming. I
am so grateful. This is what it feels like to be blessed by a pear tree!