Daniel planted the apple trees the spring before we were married.
He planted them the way he did most things, without announcement, without asking for permission or validation, simply because he had decided this was the thing to do and because the doing of it required only that he show up with the right tools and the right knowledge and the specific patience of someone who understands that some investments do not yield returns for years.
He had borrowed a truck from his brother.
He had driven to a nursery forty minutes from the house, a place he knew about because he had been raised by a man who knew about nurseries, who knew the names of trees the way other men know the names of athletes or the models of cars.
He came back with four saplings.
He had been planning to buy three.
He bought four because the woman at the nursery had a pear tree that was struggling and she said she would give it to him for nothing if he thought he could save it, and Daniel was the kind of man who never passed a struggling thing without trying to help it.
He planted all four.
Two apple trees in the south corner where the light was longest.
One apple in the east corner near the fence, which he said would be the best one eventually because the morning light was what apples wanted most.
And the pear tree from the nursery, which he planted near the back wall and which he gave the most attention to in the first two years, the most water and the most careful pruning, until it was no longer struggling and had become, by the third year, the most abundant producer of the four.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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