Plant the Trees First

Sometimes the best time to begin is years before you need the harvest

Looking back, I was practically feral.

Most summer days I rotated between the swimming pool, my horse, my BMX bike, and the fruit trees. My hair was usually tangled and turning just a little green from the pool. My inner thighs were sticky and itchy from a mixture of dirt, sweat, and horsehair. If I happened to be wearing a shirt, there was a good chance it had plum juice or orange juice on it, though I was just as likely to be wearing a bathing suit. My feet were perpetually dirty. I walked barefoot almost everywhere—even through the horse corral, something I would never dream of doing today. By bedtime, though, all that dirt was gone. I might spend the day barefoot in a horse corral, but I never climbed into bed without washing my feet.

Those three and a half years were the longest I ever lived anywhere as a child.

When I was nine years old, my family moved to a one-acre property in Valley Center, California. Looking back, those years shaped me more than I realized at the time.

The house itself was nothing special. It was a typical 1970s ranch house with gold appliances, avocado-green and teal carpet, and pale blue paneling that was pretending to be wood. We had no air conditioning and no central heat. But what we did have was a swimming pool, a horse corral, a chicken coop, a vegetable garden, and—not just a few fruit trees—lots of fruit trees.

We had Santa Rosa plums, peaches, navel oranges, Valencia oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, lemons, figs, pomegranates, kumquats, pears, and apples. The apples and pears struggled in the mild climate, but the citrus and plums more than made up for it.

The Santa Rosa plums were perfect. Warm from the California sun, they were sweet, juicy, and just tart enough to keep you reaching for another one. I can still taste them nearly fifty years later.

California Summers

My horse's name was Nony. She was a bay Standardbred, an ex-racehorse, that we bought from my uncle's stepson for $300.

To me, she was priceless.

Evidence that poor risk assessment has been one of my lifelong strengths.

Between the rows of fruit trees was what I considered my runway. I'd take off at a gallop pretending I was a jockey. At eleven years old, I saved my own money and bought my first English saddle on layaway—not because I rode English, but because jockeys used short stirrups, and I wanted to feel like one. If the fruit was too high to reach, I'd simply ride Nony underneath the branches and pick it from horseback.

I realize now that not every child had that experience.

Beyond our neighborhood stretched rolling hills covered with sagebrush and giant boulders. I crawled through coyote trails, climbed rocks, climbed trees, rode my bike, and wandered farther than most parents today would ever allow.

Somehow, I always knew how to find my way home.

One of my favorite places was a Chinaberry tree beside the house. The clothesline was stretched between two of them because we didn't own a dryer. I spent countless hours climbing those trees, sitting in the branches, and looking out over my little world.

The seasons had their own rhythm. Navel oranges belonged to summer, picked warm from the tree and eaten outside.

Winter belonged to the Valencias.

On Sunday mornings, my mother squeezed fresh Valencia orange juice while scrambled eggs from our chickens cooked on the stove and horse-shaped pancakes browned in the pan. No store-bought orange juice has ever tasted the same, and no ordinary pancake has ever seemed quite as special.

I loved the kumquats too. I'd pluck them right off the tree and pop them into my mouth whole. The rind was surprisingly sweet, but the fruit inside was intensely sour. The sweetness lasted just long enough to fool me before the sourness made my mouth pucker. Somehow, I never stopped at just one.

Most of our flock were Rhode Island Reds, but my parents let me choose one chick of my own—an Araucana hen I named Chicken a la Queen. But that's a story for another day.

The Detour

Then life changed.

We moved away after I finished seventh grade. Over the next several decades, I lived in apartments, condos, suburban neighborhoods, and houses that always felt temporary.

In truth, every home I'd ever lived in had felt temporary. Moving into my husband's house after we married became the longest I had ever lived in one place—and I hadn't even chosen it myself.

But long before I met him, I knew the kind of life I wanted.

When I was about ten years old, I drew detailed house plans to scale. The house was U-shaped, with a courtyard in the center, and connected to a horse barn. The house, barn, and pasture all sat inside a mile-long horse track, and I even designed the driveway to pass underneath the track. I pictured the whole thing in Kentucky, even though I had never been east of the Mississippi. To me, Kentucky meant rolling green hills, lush pastures, and horses.

I still have those plans. I was that serious about it.

Even on our first date, I told my husband I wanted to leave Illinois someday. I didn't know exactly where I wanted to go, but I knew the kind of life I hoped to build—one with land, horses, chickens, fruit trees, and room to put down roots.

We agreed that we would remain in Illinois until his son graduated from high school, and life gave us reasons to stay several years beyond that. I understood, and I never regretted it.

The dream I'd carried since childhood never really changed.

It simply waited.

Putting Down Roots

When we finally moved to Tennessee, there were a hundred projects competing for our attention. The house needed work. The property needed work. Everything needed work.

But I felt strongly about one thing.

Plant the trees first.

Our first fruit trees and ornamentals, planted before almost everything else.

If you're fortunate enough to buy property, plant your trees first. Whether they're fruit trees, shade trees, or simply the ones you've always imagined outside your window, plant them now. Don't wait until after the kitchen remodel, after the deck is finished, or after life settles down.

Trees measure time differently than we do. Five years will pass whether you plant them or not.

Every year you wait is a year the trees can't get back. It takes time before you see the first blossoms, the first persimmons, the first cherries, the first shade, or the first basket of apples. That's exactly why you should plant them as soon as you can.

Our river birch—five years of quiet growth.

So we planted them.

More than fifty trees altogether—fruit trees, flowering trees, shade trees, and a few simply because I loved them.

We watered. We mulched. We waited. Some trees took off immediately. Others sulked for a year before deciding they liked their new home. We lost a few. We replanted. Every spring we walked the rows looking for new buds, new blossoms, and the first tiny signs that they were settling in. None of it happened quickly, but every year there was a little more shade, a few more blossoms, and another reminder that time was doing its quiet work.

Five years later, most of the trees are thriving, though not every one has flourished. The harvests have been modest. This year I was thrilled to see our first cherries, even if the birds got to them before we did. We have our first hopeful crop of figs—that has been a learning process—and the elderberries promise to be loaded.

Our first promising crop of elderberries.

Every spring brings new blossoms. Every year the trees grow a little larger. And every year my life looks a little more like the one I imagined all those years ago.

An afternoon under the ginkgo, surrounded by the life we've been growing.

I still miss those California fruit trees.

Especially the Santa Rosa plums.

But these days, when I walk through our own orchard, I realize I'm no longer chasing that childhood memory.

I'm finally growing one of my own.

In fact, we're already planning this fall's planting: three more apple trees, another pear, another cherry, another fig, and an evergreen for the backyard.

Apparently, I still haven't stopped planting.

Editor’s Note: My brother (who apparently serves as my unpaid citrus fact-checker—and who happens to have both navel and Valencia orange trees in his own yard) informed me that I had my oranges backward. Navel oranges ripen in winter, while Valencias are the summer oranges. In my defense, this was Southern California. We rode horses and lived outdoors nearly year-round, so my childhood memories don’t come with neat little calendar pages attached. I was just as likely to be picking navel oranges from horseback in January as I was picking plums in July. My mom was probably squeezing fresh Valencia orange juice in the summer after all. Funny how confidently our brains rearrange the details while still remembering exactly how a place felt. Apparently, my memories are organized more by horses than by horticulture.