#peach tree

Source details and larger version.

ID credit: 26141230192 on 小红书

Happy Valentine's Day. 💝

Somehow in all of my stress with medical issues and laptop and everything else I have going on, I had forgotten to check my peach tree to see if the peaches are ripe. But there it was, a proof that the peaches were not only ripe, but good, because someone came to the riverbank only to collect peaches, and only from that one tree. My peaches had to be good. I had planted a peach tree and now the local community has free peaches!

Incredibly happy, I went to check on the tree after I was done swimming; it's not a grafted peach, it grew from a wild seed, so peaches are small. Some ugnrafted peaches would grow bitter fruit, and I didn't know the flavour of this one. I found the tree covered in fruit, with a bunch of peaches on the ground; I opted to collect the ones on the ground, because they looked healthy and ripe. And then I tried one. It was perfect. Incredibly sweet and not a hint of bitterness.

I am so proud of my little peach tree, back when I planted her, she was my height, she was growing in my spot in the community garden, and I had to dig it out because we're not allowed to grow trees in the community garden. So I planted it in a public space, tied it to a big stick to protect it from the city maintenance crew which commonly cut down small trees, and made sure to water it for the first few months. Year after year I would pull out all of the flowers from the tree, because the branches were so weak, they would have broken if peaches grew on them! I've seen fruit trees break and fall because of this issue. This year was the first one I decided the tree was strong enough to hold fruit, and I let it all grow. None of the branches broke, and now we all can have peaches. People living in the area don't have to go to the store to get them! They can just walk on the riverbank and peaches are right there.

History teaches us that even after the darkest winters, the world remembers how to bloom again.