I don’t know jack about fruit tree husbandry (or, my ex would say, any kind of husbandry at all), but I found out that there are several critical stages and they can be analogous to periods in life:

1. Establishment (the first couple> of years after planting) It’s make-or-break. Brother Sister tree is building roots and a top. There is nothing to spare, and everything to gain, everything to lose. Nothing in reserve; nothing to fall back on. Too little water, too little attention, too much competition from those other lives, striving, can permanently crook it, stunt it, mangle its arms its noggin its skin its feet. Deep, structural history. Imagine a time of life so crucial that you snip the flowers from your body so that feeding beauty doesn’t keep you from being able to sufficiently grow your heart, mind, and guts.

2. "June drop" The tree drops some of its early fruits. Too many is much much-ness. Let the squirrels eat them. Let the ground feed. But it isn’t in order to share. The drop means for the limited stores to be directed, guided into the remaining fruits. And a good grower adds to this, taking off extra early fruits so as to coax the tree beyond it’s natural physique. Harmonizing with it to make it fit for man.> The arborist’s eyes see, guess skillfully at, picking fruit well. Too soon and they can’t tell which fruits were going to drop all by themselves; too late and the tree has already spread germinal substance in useless spaces.

3. Bloom Window Bees, beetles, butterflies, moths; sunlight, wind, and warmth. They stream in through this window and feed those blooms while they must. Unless winds press the windows shut and blow or freeze the bees out — cloud or shield the light-heat — block the threshold with stones. It is a very short period where the tree husband stares — she watches the forecast like a dog you maybe can’t trust. How wild though, right? The living skies you depend on are maybe untrustworthy? No, not that. You maybe can’t trust them — can’t trust them to desire the same ends as yourself; can’t trust that your aims are in line with hers; maybe* she maybe** cannot trust you, but she doesn’t need to. You are the one who is dependent — looking before you leap and staring before you step.

4. Dormant Pruning The tree gives you a gift. No — you find a gift for your purposes — a gift to which the rest of the earth is indifferent, of which it knows nothing about, about which it experiences no gift-ness. Like monarchs rejoice in milkweed and everyone else either stays far away or is so disinterested as to not notice that they’ve bumped it, trampled it, spent the night in it. You take off extra branches — for your purposes, not the tree’s or the skies’ — and make your later energy-management work easier, more sure.

5. And then you have, not constant, but continual care from there.

*twice **is nice