The Little Bodies of the Pears

Uncared-for, unpruned pear tree in the yard that by all odds should not be thriving is doing fine, thanks, and for a few days in June I get to see its pears, growing butt-side upward, or twinned, shapely but always bite-sized, and just as they blush yellow and need one more day to look edible I wake up to find every one of them gone. As if I had dreamed them! Not a core left beneath the tree -- not a clue as to which species ate all the pears, or when. So this year after admiring them I took some pictures and then picked a few, that I might prove I did not dream them, because by all rights, on top of a cliff with one inch of soil and six inches of clay on top of sandstone, a pear tree should not be growing here. But it doesn't care if it should or not.

Neither should prickly pears, as in prickly-pear cactus, be growing a mere 15 feet away in a tiny, stony south-facing, two-foot-square micro-climate next to the pumphouse, but so it is, and when it's time it has those spiny crimson pears with little puckers growing whisker-like thorns. Given the right micro-climate, like hot sandstone, cactus in the Ozarks isn't unusual.

Yet two kinds of pears -- almost within arms' length of each other? That proves they're divine. Surely I live on the border of the imaginary and the real. On top of that, I can never forget what a man said to me one day, "Pears are sexy."

Strange Harvest

The lone pear tree on the property, planted by idealistic former tenants, every year raises not only my hopes but excites the opossums, squirrels, maggots, birds and bugs around here. Enraptured by the spring blossoms, we watch amazed as they form green pears that gain weight all summer. Then the animals get them all. Except this year they left them for me. It's a plentiful harvest, but they're all bizarre and deformed like these:

The problem could be 1) Leafroller worms chewing on the buds back in spring, creating oddly-shaped pears and bronze-colored scabbing. 2) Another kind of worm, and we had a plague of army worms in May. 3) Fruit fungus (thus the brownish-black patch on the middle pear). 4) Fukushima. A photo of a pear grown this year near Fukushima, Japan, found online, looks a lot like these.

My Life Among the Tree Nymphs

The pear tree in the Divine yard had pears on occasion, usually no bigger than an inch long and never edible. Planted in the yard's unfriendly soil, most of it pure clay, the tree never thrived and never grew any taller. Then two years ago my friend Ace told me to prune the suckers, meaning the branches growing vertically from established horizontal branches. I pruned the suckers I could reach. Darned if the tree didn't grow a couple of feet in a year, large enough to cast shade. Again I pruned as far as I could reach. This year, pears. They'll probably be pecked and wormy before it's time to pick, but they are beautiful and this is progress.

This is the only fruit tree on my 100 acres. The Dutch couple who lived here before me planted it. Europeans are genetically wired to plant fruit trees. My father had a plum tree and nearly threw a party when after three years the skeletal thing produced one plum. Demetrius, who lived here, planted an apple tree in the meadow where it only encouraged Oak Apple Gall Wasps and was eaten by deer. Obtaining a baby nectarine tree, like a crazy man he dug a pit for it in the clay near the house. After four years this tree maxed out at a couple of twigs about knee high. Now and then it put forth a leaf, as if shyly waving hello to a hostile and uncaring universe. I left it in the yard to remind me that Demetrius, like all gardeners, was a person of hope. Then, about two weeks ago, mowing the lawn I accidentally mowed it over and wrecked it utterly. So ended its unlucky little life. I heard Demetrius shout abuse at me from beyond the grave.