Fire Blight

When we first moved into our urban St. Louis home, we cut down an old, dying tree and replaced it with an apple tree.  How wonderful it will be, I thought, to go into my backyard and pick a delicious crunchy and crisp apple straight from the tree.  It would remind me of my childhood in California where the memory of those apples taste far better than any real apple I've tasted since.  

That old apple tree bares many memories -- the day it reached out and caught my sister's kite and entangled the string throughout its limbs, its limbs cut and used for "much needed" spankings, the pink blossoms that would spring forth each April as if the tree were cotton candy.

I suppose I neglected the tree, hoping I would plant it, water it occasionally and let the sun nourish the fruit until it was ready for picking.  I knew it needed a good pruning but I was afraid I might prune it wrong and kill it so I left it to grow gnarly, each limb fighting for access to the light. 

Imagine my dismay when little brown spots began to appear on the leaves last fall.  Oh, no!  Is my tree dying?  I pruned the tree, removing any limb that seemed to be growing in the wrong direction.  When spring arrived, I was relieved to see the mini leaves begin to sprout and the blossoms to appear -- we will have apples this year!  But by late April, the leaves began to wither and by May, many of the leaves were turning brown.  The tree was dying before my eyes.

I frantically began to search the cause of my dying tree.  "It was the cold snap we had in the spring," one person told me.  "It just needs more water," said another.  "Root rot," said another.  "Too much water is rotting the trunk.  You'll just have to wait for it to die." Finally, I received a diagnosis that seemed to make sense -- fire blight -- a bacterial disease that can infect the entire tree and ultimately kill it.  "I lost my pear tree to fire blight," someone said. "It's pretty much dead."  

It is NOT dead, I reasoned.  There are still apples growing and not all of the leaves are dead.  If it dies, so be it, but I won't let it go without a fight!  I got out the pruners, climbed a chair and began to give the tree a good dose of CPR.  I cut every dead branch, every infected leaf, every part of the tree that might infect the rest.  It was like the hiker whose arm was crushed under a boulder -- after several days of crushing pain, he realized he would die there if he didn't amputate his arm.  He sawed his arm free with a pocket knife, losing a limb but saving his own life.  He was able to climb down the mountain and reach help.  

Would I have been so willing to cut off my own arm, had I been the one stuck on the mountain?  I'm sure I would have reasoned that I couldn't possibly continue living without my arm!  What about my son?  He would have an armless mother?  But wait!  My son would be motherless!  Maybe an arm isn't all that important.  And I'm sure I would be hungry by then.  My stomach would tell my arm, "We're going to have to let you go -- it's time for lunch now."  And then I would remember that I needed to make lunch for my boy--he's not able to do that for himself yet.  I would muster all of the adrenaline in my being, gnaw at my arm until it was free, and climb to the valley.  I would be so amazed to be alive, and I would look up to the mountain and wonder if a wild cat was making a meal of my beloved arm.   

Pruning hurts.  "Wait," my dying tree seems to be calling.  "Ouch!  What are you doing?  I need those!"  But later, she will thank me.  When she is healthy again, and her fruit is abundant, she will extend her arm and hand me an apple.  And it will taste as wonderful as the apples I remember from childhood, the best I've ever had.