Leland is howling. Silas is perched on a branch, bawling. Imogen stands between them, looking helpless in spite of the chain saw in her hands. Today, her T-shirt says Weeds are flowers too. —Eeyore.
“Hey, Leland,” Mom soothes. “Robert bought a lathe today. He’s going to make soup bowls from the wood.” Robert is Mom’s boyfriend. He’s a bit of a jerk, but I can handle him.
“He could make you a spinning top too,” I coo.
Leland scowls.
“The tree isn’t happy,” Mom says. “She’s dying.”
Leland’s features soften. He takes a few sob-shuddered breaths. “Could I plant a seed from one of the apples?” he asks. “And grow another tree just like it?”
“Sure,” Imogen says. “You could grow a tree exactly like it, if you want. But not from a seed. If you want a tree that’s genetically the same as this one, you need to graft parts of this tree to the trunk of another apple tree.”
“Graft?” Silas says. “You stick them together, right? And they grow into one tree.”
“Black electrician’s tape does the trick,” Imogen says.” But I’ve got to cut them just right, and it’s got to be done in spring.”
Leland sniffs and looks at Mom. “Can we?”
“That’s a great idea,” Mom smiles.
“I’ll cut a few scions—those are small branches,” Imogen explains. “We’ll keep them somewhere dark and cool until grafting time.”
“Under my bed?” Leland suggests.
Imogen laughs. “Let’s bury them in your yard. In a plastic bag. The earth is nice and cool.”
“We can mark the spot with rocks!” Silas cries.
“Like a gravestone,” Leland says grimly.
“No,” Silas says. “Like buried treasure!”
Imogen pulls a penknife from her pocket. “Okay, everyone?”
“I’ll get some ziplock bags,” Mom says.
After we bury the scions, Mom packs the boys off to the playground so they don’t have to witness the destruction.
We picked the last apples a few days ago. Now we dismantle the tree house. We pry out nails and pull down board after board.
After that, Imogen fires up the chain saw. It whines and gripes, tearing up the afternoon air with its noise. It growls through branch after branch. The limbs crash to the ground and stay where they fall. I half-imagined they’d get up and walk away, as if freed. But no. This is the end.
Imogen chooses a few thick pieces for Robert to turn on his lathe. The rest she bucks into firewood, which I stack under the porch.
As we work, Imogen tells me she grew up in the North, in the forest. Her parents were “back-to-the-landers.” They lived off the land as much as possible. They hunted deer, gathered berries, raised sheep for wool. From the age of six, Imogen was chopping wood for the woodstove.
“Apple wood burns long and hotter than most woods. It smells supersweet,” Imogen says dreamily as she pours tea from her thermos. “You guys will have a cozy winter.”
She is perched on the stump of our old tree. The yard looks bald and exposed. The gentle drifts of sawdust belie the savagery.
“It’s always sad to see an apple tree go,” Imogen says. “The people of Vancouver Island used to grow most of their food. Now, we get food from a truck or barge or container ship. And you can bet it wasn’t grown on a family farm. Chances are the food you eat traveled more than five hundred miles to get to your belly. It’s crazy. Windfall I got a blackberry Popsicle this summer that was made in Florida! It came from the opposite corner of the continent in a refrigerated truck!”
“That’s a lot of gasoline,” I said.
“You know what’s in a blackberry Popsicle? Blackberries and water. Blackberries grow like weeds around here, and water—well, it falls on us half the year.” Sure enough, a light rain had begun to fall.
“My neighbors grow food in their backyard,” I say, thinking of Olive’s family.
“Oh, yeah. People are starting to farm again—in the city too. The mayor recently planted tomatoes and kale at city hall. My friend Valerie gathers her own salt. She boils ocean water on the stove until the water steams off. She follows the 100-Mile Diet. She doesn’t eat anything grown more than a hundred miles away. I’m working on a ten-meter diet. This past spring, my landlord let me put a vegetable garden in the back of the apartment building. I’d been guerrilla gardening back there for years anyway.”
“Guerrilla gardening?” I ask.
“Yeah. I grew tomatoes and peas in an area behind the garage without him knowing. Guerrilla gardeners do this all over the world. They take over land that isn’t being used—or that’s being badly used—and grow food. Some grow wildflowers to add beauty to a derelict area. There’s a group that drops seed bombs from airplanes. They make ‘bombs’ of dirt and compost crammed with wildflower seeds. On International Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day, May 1, thousands of people around the world plant sunflower seeds in public places. Imagine: sunflowers sprout up in parking lots, outside of banks, along highways and bike paths.
“People have gardened like this for hundreds of years. There are apple trees along the banks of the canals in northern Utah that were planted one hundred and fifty years ago by the people who dug the canals. They buried apple cores from their lunches in the freshly turned soil, knowing they’d be back one day to collect the apples. In South Africa, the very poor who live in slums plant vegetables on any spare bit of land. It brings them together as a community.”
“I’m doing a project on South Africa for school,” I tell her.
“So you know about Nelson Mandela?”
“Yeah. Cool guy!” Mandela was South Africa’s president from 1994 to 1999. When he was young, he fought against his country’s racist government. He was put in jail. Mandela is black, as are most South Africans. The government enforced apartheid, which means “apartness.” Only white people could be in power. White people had tons of money and land. Everyone else got the toughest jobs, the worst land and the crummiest schools. Black girls weren’t even allowed to go to school.
People all over the world fought against apartheid. Countries wouldn’t trade with South Africa. Mom says that for years neither she nor any of her friends would buy anything made in South Africa. Finally apartheid ended, and Mandela was released from prison. Soon after that he was elected president.
“He was in jail for twenty-seven years,” Imogen says, shaking her head.
“Yeah. He taught the other inmates about the law and human rights. The jail was known as ‘Mandela University,’” I say.
“He also planted a garden on the prison roof so the inmates could have fresh vegetables,” Imogen says.
I didn’t know that.
“There was so much produce, the prison guards brought sacks for Mandela to fill. He actually grew food for his jailers! He said a garden was one of the few things in prison that a person could control: ‘To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it and then harvest it, offered…a taste of freedom.’ That’s what guerrilla gardening is about: freedom, the freedom to choose what you eat and to work and feast with your neighbors. Food tastes better when it is grown on the land where you live.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. I kick at the pile of boards on the ground. I am interested in what Imogen is saying, but now I am drenched with sadness. “We used to pick apples straight from the tree house. They were the best apples I ever ate.”
Imogen gives me a sympathetic frown. Then she shrugs. “Cheer up! It couldn’t live forever. The oldest apple tree is one hundred and eighty-five years old. It’s in Vancouver. They’ve got a fence around it and everything. Yours did very well. Listen, come and see my garden tomorrow. I just planted chard and broccoli—they can survive the winter. Bring your bike. I’ll give you a tour of a few local guerrilla gardens.”