47
At the beginning of this book I spoke about my lemon tree—how I found it dying near the house when I first came here, how I brought it back to life, and how it recompensed me with its fragrant blossoming, delicious fruit, and unparalleled limoncello. But a dozen years passed, and after enjoying old age, the tree began to decline. Many leaves fell from the tree, most of its branches withered, and its blossoms were meager and melancholic and put forth precious little fruit.
My friend Puyu, the elderly tree planter, had passed away and was no longer here to give me advice. Therefore, I repeated what he had told me to do to that same lemon tree the first time we met, but this time I suffered defeat: I pruned again—in vain. I fertilized and watered it—and the lemon tree waned. Finally, I consulted with other experts who even graced the tree and me with a visit—they came, sawed off a branch, examined the dry core, and held counsel in hushed tones beside the patient. They whispered together, asked me questions, just like doctors in a hospital who address the relative rather than the aged patient himself: “How old is he?” But it was not I who planted the tree, and I was unable to give them an accurate answer.
In the end, they advised me to cut down the tree and plant a new one in its place. But I did not dare do that. I said to myself: Winter will come, rain will fall, spring will bloom, and perhaps God will remember my poor old lemon tree; He will come visit and perform a miracle.
No miracle occurred, but a few days later an unfamiliar couple knocked at my door and asked to come in. The woman was very excited. This is the house, she told me, where she spent her childhood and adolescence, and she wanted to show it to her beloved. I invited them to come in, and after she had shown him what she wanted to show and told him what she wanted to tell, I asked her about the lemon tree—did she know who planted it and in which year? She said her father planted it a few years before she was born and, according to her childhood memories, the tree was full grown.
I plucked up the courage to ask her another question, an impolite but necessary one, and figured out that my lemon tree was more than sixty years old—a grand old age for a citrus tree—and those experts were right, the tree must be felled and a new one planted in its place.
I did it with heavy heart and light hands. The tree was so feeble and falling apart that some of the felling was achieved by simply jolting and pulling it. After the deed was done, I went to a plant nursery to buy a new lemon tree. While alive, my lemon tree gave me one yield of fruit per year. Now I resolved to take a variety that bears fruit twice a year, and I chose a large sapling, because I, too, am a rather old lemon tree, and I do not want to wait too long for it to bear fruit.
I invited my eldest granddaughter, who was five and a half years old at the time, to the planting ceremony. A child should participate in a tree-planting ceremony so that she can grow with the tree, and beside the tree, and will know to plant trees herself. We did not plant the new lemon tree where the old one had stood, in case there was something wrong with the soil. We chose a new place based on its distance from neighboring trees, hours of sun and shade, depth of soil, and distance from the kitchen. We discussed all this, and finally my granddaughter determined the spot: “Here!” And I stuck my pitchfork in the ground.
Happily, this time I did not damage the underground irrigation pipe. I dug the planting hole, we filled it with water, and when the ground had absorbed it all we filled it again, and after that we covered the ground with compost from my composter and added another thin layer of soil. I explained to both children, my granddaughter and the sapling, that today we ought to call the compost d’shonet and the composter madshen, and I discovered that a child of five and a half and a two-year-old lemon tree also have trouble pronouncing these new words.
We added more water, positioned the sapling in the well, and then took a step back to ensure it was standing straight and fitted in with its surroundings. We considered it from a variety of angles, and when the three of us were completely satisfied, I cut and removed the bag in which the sapling’s roots were packed, and we heard it sigh heavily with relief.
We raked and covered the clump of roots in the earth, firmed the soil a little—the paces and steps of a five-and-a-half-year-old girl are the finest firming method possible for the sapling, exactly like the perfect pressure applied to the aching back of her grandfather in those days. We watered the sapling once again, stuck three supporting poles around it, and lashed the sapling to them with strips of material, because rope can injure the sapling’s outer bark. We did not tighten them, since the sapling needs to move a little in the wind, otherwise it will not develop muscles nor thicken or gain strength as it should.
The planting is over. I have a new lemon tree in the garden. I still feel sad at the sight of the empty space where that old-timer stood, but I am planning to fill it with a grape arbor. The young lemon tree has acclimatized well and is used to its neighbors and the garden. Soon it will grow bigger and bear fruit. And one day my granddaughter will tell her own granddaughter that the time has come to plant a new lemon tree in its place, because this one is already sixty years old.