Humm and Plums

Humm and Plum

Noel Laflin

6-1-19

I had to take down a backyard plum tree yesterday. The birds and I are both going to miss those branches.

It was not the outcome I was hoping for, as I have been keeping out an ever hopeful eye that leaves would miraculously sprout this spring. But years of prolonged drought did it in. This year’s plentiful rainfall came just a little too late unfortunately. The poor tree innards were as brittle as – well, sticks.

The job did not take long as the tree in the northeast corner of the yard had never really grown to great height. But despite its diminutive stature, it produced some really good Satsuma plum crops in the past – enough to produce a few dozen pints of jam over the last decade and a half.

Two apricot trees are not looking so well at this stage either, so I trimmed them back severely while I had pruning shears in hand – but they did not suffer the same dastardly fate as poor old Mr. Satsuma. The birds and I are going to miss those branches too.

When all was said and done – twigs scattered into the compost pile, larger pieces hacked into smaller pieces, blood cleaned from hands, a silent prayer of thanks from me, to me, for not pruning off the upper portion of my middle left hand finger at one point, etc., I sat in the shade of my balcony and watched as a hummingbird went for a feeder hiding behind the giant pink rosebush.

And to my wonderment, once the photo was later opened, there it was: light barely touching the Allen’s neck, tongue ever so slightly protruding from the extended beak – but even more beautiful, two healthy green plums from the last surviving plum tree. Those two have a hundred siblings on the tall Santa Rosa tree right now. I had planted it just two years ago, right about now, as I feared - even back then - that the other tree which had just been reduced to rubble might not make it.

Just to be sure that this one had a better chance of survival, the tree is planted next to a fountain that is always splashing its trunk and tends to overflow its way.

Some forethought is just plum brilliant at times.

And I, with left middle finger still attached, continue to believe that some things are just plum lucky too. Otherwise, I would have been cursing the fates with the other hand.