On Wed, 9 Apr 2003 21:16:25 -0400, "Queen"
wrote:

It's easy to get anthropomorphic (or rather anthropopathic) about
plants, projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto them!

For example: I had to take out my Santa Rosa plum last year,
and "threatened" the apricot with a similar fate if it didn't get its
act together (bore very little last few years). Whaddyaknow,
the "intimidated" apricot is loaded! Now, if I can only cut a deal
with the squirrels...g

I've felt this way before. I once bought a beautiful japanese maple and
lovingly planted it on my patio in a half barrell container. I loved that
tree like nothing else - it was so lovely. I had searched high and low to
find it.

Unfortunately, it did not come back the following season. Apparently,
its only marginally hardy in my zone, and the container just did it in.

When I took it down, and chopped it up, and disposed of it.....it kinda
felt like murder....like hacking up a dead body after the deed. I got a
creepy feeling about it anyway.

Weird, eh?

Oh, how I understand!

I've had to take out several trees over [censored] years, and each
time there was a kind of grieving. I had become close to each one.

The avocado, which I never actually planned to grow; I just did that
thing with 3 toothpicks in the pit, suspended in a glass of water.
It looked so nice, I planted it, and a few years later, whoa! there's
a big tree. It lifted up the concrete edging with its powerful roots!
The squirrels used to score the avocados with their **&&%)() teeth,
but sometimes they left me a few. Eventually, it had to go.

The peach tree bore so lavishly that we got exhausted climbing up &
down the ladder to pick those gorgeous fruits at the peak of
perfection. I canned, I baked, I gave them away left and right.
Eventually it, too, had to go, afte a long and productive life.

The plum never was a real world-beater, but the fruit it did bear was
delicious. One year, toward the end of its life, only one bough was
still bearing. I tied paper bags around the few fruits on there to
keep them from the squirrels, and did manage to harvest a few.

Keeps you in touch with the cycle of life.


--
Polar