This past Wednesday was the Jewish holiday of Tu B’shevat. This day is a celebrate for the “Birthday of the Trees,” and is the specific day of the year that Jews celebrate and ideally plant trees. This year it occurred in February, but the date varies depending upon the Jewish Calendar. It so happened that in the same week of the celebration, Fred and I planted 4 new trees of our own in our yard.
I had a conversation with my friend Paige, a garden professional, about my pitiful fruit trees from last year. The fig, blueberry, raspberry plants that I had mail-ordered last year are the saddest examples I’ve ever seen. I asked her where I should get nice blueberries bushes and a good hardy fig tree to transplant into my yard, and she assured me that she could get me good plants and that now was the time to put them in the ground. P:aige brought me the trees on Friday, and this Saturday, Fred and I toiled in the yard, planting 4 beautiful new plants: 2 blueberry bushes, 1 fig tree, and 1 “Snowball” Viburnum bush.
I think my new Brown Turkey Fig Tree is the most lovely specimen ever. Compared with the twig of a fig I had before (thusly named “FigTwig,”) my new tree is magnificent. While planting my new tree, I actually accidentally stepped on the original “FigTwig” that I planted one year ago. It snapped to the ground, and when I pulled up little FigTwig’s broken single branch and compared it with the new plant, he was a pathetic thing not 1/10 the size of the new fig. I love the moss that covered him and how his arms seem to try to wrap up the sun in a loving embrace. He spindly nature offers an air of mystery and seem exotic to me.
The Snowball Viburnum was the largest plant we put it. It’s a lovely big bushy plant with large white “snowball” flowers, which look like the puffy flowers of a hydrangea. This bush is an excellent bush for chickens, as they adore to roost inside the bush on its their long horizontal branches.
The blueberries far exceed the plants I received through the mail-order catalogue. Currently, my blueberries from last year are probably about a8” high at this point. The plants Paige brought me were about 3 ft. and 4 ft. plants. One variety is “Premium,” the other wasn’t labeled. They need to be different types so they will cross pollinate and produce the fruit. We put them on the edge of an existing “natural area” in the yard. It’s my hope we can add bulbs and other shrubs to beautify these leaf ridden messes natural areas.
And all of these plantings were done amide the sad reality that it appears I have forever lost my engagement ring. I realized I couldn’t find it on Wednesday morning, and we’ve searched everywhere. It’s the most painful loss I think I’ve experienced – and that both humbles and shames me. I can’t really describe how it feels to lose such a sentimental treasure. Fred gave me the diamond ring when he asked me to be his wife, and he tried to wrap up his love for me in it’s token form, and to lose that token and physical reminder hurts the most. Also, realizing we’ve lost it’s tangible worth is difficult. It is humbling and wonderful though to realize that such materialistic things are fleeting; and these are not the things that life is about; we are safe, and well and surrounded by amazing and loving family and friends; a ring is nothing compared to these things. God Willing, we will it, and if not, it’s perfectly okay.
Joy to your World,
Elizabeth
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