Putting down roots

Every time I've been lucky enough to buy a piece of land, my first act has always been to plant at least part of it with fruit trees. You could say it's my way of staking my claim, of marking my territory. I'm not sure where this compulsion comes from, but I think that like most compulsive behavior, it's rooted somewhere deep in my childhood. My grandmother's house outside Zurich had a small orchard of choice fruit trees. An apricot tree espaliered against the wall of her house only stopped shivering long enough to produce two or three impossibly large, golden orange globes per year. These were so sweet and perfumed that their flavor still explodes in my memory. Of course, they tasted all the better for being so few!

I suppose that, since those days, the taste of supermarket fruit has never ceased to leave me cold. But it's more than the desire for superlative, old-fashioned flavor in fruit that compels me to plant orchards. Somehow, my very idea of Paradise is an orchard, frothing with flowers in spring and hanging heavy with fragrant, sun-ripe fruits in summer and fall. I love abundance, and an orchard perfectly embodies abundance for me.

When we were in Morocco in early spring a couple of years ago, almond trees were blooming everywhere, and the image of an almond orchard spangled with wildflowers has never left me since. As almonds grow in Provence, I decided that this was what the field extending from our mas was going to look like.

After all, at the end of the 19th century, almond orchards were extensive in our part of Provence as well as in other parts of southern France. But today, with a few exceptions, most of the almond orchards have disappeared. Once, every mas had an almond tree, if only to announce the approach of spring. But the almond having an amazing tenacity for life, vestige trees persist here and there, in hedgerows, vineyards, and roadsides. Although I knew they were there, for the most part I hadn't noticed them at other seasons of the year. An almond tree in leaf is difficult to spot at a distance with an unpracticed eye. But last week, it was impossible to miss the masses of almond blossoms.

Seeing all these trees in bloom made me dreamy, as just three weeks before, I had planted my third--and I hope last--orchard, in the field south of the mas. I kept making Denis slam on the brakes so I could photograph various almond trees. As we had friends with us, I didn't want to keep them waiting with my craziness. I'd run to the tree, turning on my camera on the fly. Snapping away, I'd hyperventilate the blossoms' incredible fragrance, a mix of honey and bitter almond essence. The most picturesque tree wasn't the most beautiful. It was the old tree in the photo at right, literally torn in half lengthwise, and still stubbornly covered with blooms and flower buds.

But back to my third, latest, and last orchard. To tell its tale, I need to tell you first a bit about the first and second orchards. My first orchard I planted in southern Indiana at a time when I knew next to nothing about growing fruit trees. But I did know enough to know I wanted old varieties, and that's what I planted. In spite of my ignorance, the trees flourished, albeit in a somewhat unkempt manner. My last memory of that orchard is an extremely painful one. I had gone through a divorce, and that orchard was for sale. Meanwhile, both my exhusband and I had moved to the city, and he had insisted on keeping our Labrador, Troutears. One evening, he called to tell me that our formerly mutual dog had been hit by a car and, after languishing for several days, had died. Of course I was devastated, and also furious at my ex for among other things, not having told me as soon as Troutears had been hit.

I insisted on burying him. I threw a sleeping bag in the car and went to collect his body. Truth to tell, I can't remember that part. I must have entirely suppressed it from my memory. I drove the 80 miles back down to my former home, arriving after dark on a chilly autumn evening. The house, a gaunt but beautiful white Victorian farmhouse, seemed ghostly as it stood vacant, waiting for new owners. I had strange emotions pulling into the driveway. This was my house,and yet it wasn't--not anymore.

Somehow--again, I have no memory of how--I hauled the dog's body to the orchard. I spread out my sleeping bag next to him, wrapped myself in it, and lay looking up at the stars, remembering all of Troutie's foibles, the miles I had run with him, the time he had jumped out of the back of my then-husband's truck. The then-husband kept driving and never looked back, having the philosophy that if the dog 'had it together' he would find his way home. It took me a week's worth of solid anguish, poster stapling, and nonstop phone calls to find him at a farm miles from our house. I thought of all the romps my children and I had with him, and all the rituals we had evolved around him. All now extinguished.

I got up and rolled Troutie's body in the sleeping bag. Then I dug his grave on the spot I had just warmed with my body and buried him, next to a plum tree. I must have gotten home very late that night.

My second orchard was bigger--about 40 trees, and its story not nearly so sad. Except that in the end, I had to leave that orchard--with its French mirabelles and greengages and Calville Blanc d'Hiver apples--behind as well. Its subsequent owners didn't seem to recognize what they had and let it run wild.

My third and newest orchard is of course in Haute Provence. I had been plotting its planting ever since we bought the mas, and my plots were feverish. I would be able to grow almonds and apricots, and--why not?--figs! For the first time ever, my orchard would be in a mild-climate area, and I'd be able to grow these fruits which were for me nearly mythical.

As fruit trees are almost always small whips which take a while to start producing, I couldn't wait another season to plant. I found a nursery not too far away supplying the ancient 'Princess' almond variety as well as others, placed my order, and planned my orchard-planting for mid-February. My previous orchards I'd planted by myself, digging the holes by hand. This time (70 trees!), I enlisted the help of our hard-working farmer/shepherd neighbor Jean-Claude Arnoux. He tilled the ground, and when I arrived, set to work digging the holes with his backhoe.

These were some holes--about a cubic meter in volume! An elderly neighbor, whose wife used to wash clothes in our lavoir, warned us about the soil. He said that 40 years ago, it had been "turned upside down" in an effort to grow grapevines, and that nothing had grown well there since. He advised us to space the trees widely and amend the soil thoroughly.

Jean-Claude, an organic farmer himself, was kind enough to part with some rotted manure for my project. We amended each hole lavishly (thanks to J-C and his backhoe), refilled the holes with topsoil, and set about planting the trees with the help of Jean-Claude's eldest son. The bareroot trees were heeled into a water-soaked trench while we worked. At first, their sheer number seemed discouraging (would we ever get done?), but with the energy of my helpers, we got the job done over three days of steady work. The resourceful Jean-Claude hauled over a home-made water cistern made from an old truck bed, and we watered in the trees using simple gravity flow. Thoroughly watering in newly planted trees is probably the single most important step, eliminating deadly air pockets which will cause the fragile roots to dry out and the tree to die.

As we worked in the cold, sometimes under icy intermittent rain, we were the object of many curious stares from passersby. Some, who knew Jean-Claude, stopped by to get the lowdown on what the Parisians were up to. All of them offered opinions and advice, most of it predicting doom. No one, it seems, had ever successfully grown fruit in this "pays" ("country" or here, "neck of the woods"). Most people said it was too cold here for fruit. Cold? Well, admittedly, it was colder here than in southern Provence. But, I thought, these people don't know what cold is! Back in Indiana, you certainly wouldn't be planting trees in mid-February!

As for me, in spite of the abundance of local wisdom to the contrary, I am optimistic about my third orchard. I have learned enough about the people of the Provence back-country to know that they are tightly bound by habit and tradition. Most likely, no one here had been in the habit of growing fruit. Anyway, it's not as if I had a choice in the matter. I have always planted orchards, even if it meant leaving them behind as my footprint to posterity. Hope springs eternal.

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