I see apple trees

Remember in that movie, maybe it was called Sixth Sense, the little boy confiding in Bruce Willis, says, "I see dead people."? Well yesterday, Mother's Day, we spent the majority of the day outside doing yard work, and after a dozen or so sightings, of apple trees, I started to feel like that little boy.

Of course, we have the two trees we planted on purpose last year. They are doing fine, thanks for asking. And there is the tree in the front weed patch that pretends to be a garden. It's growing quite well. Then there is the other one coming up by the sugar maple. One of these years I'll have to move it. If we think we'd like to eat those apples. And then there are the others.

I see them in the flower garden on the hill. And there is a new addition in the garden behind the house sanctioned for the tomatoes and basil. I noticed that beauty while I was tilling up the soil. Little trees dressed in 8 to 10 leaves. Puffing their petioles to the sky. You have to love them, coming from a composted start; all that spunk.

My sighting aren't limited to our own might half acre. While waiting for my children at their bus stop, the end of the neighbor's driveway I noticed a row of apple trees, and wondered if one of the twins had launched a core from an open car window. They don't mow that end of their world, so maybe they will have apples too.

I always thought it was difficult to start a tree from a seed. But why should I think that. My parents have a very nice maple I started from a helicopter some 30 billion years ago. And I've pulled many a mighty oak out of the front garden. (There is one out there now... I was thinking to pot it and transplant it, instead of giving it the unceremonious tug and pitch.) But apples, for some reason I thought you had to first wait for the mailman to deliver the seed catalog, place and order and voila, your tree arrives. But I'm finding out, it's much simpler than that. You just have to plant the seed. Much like a lot of things in life.