Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

The Princess Gang rolled into the cul-de-sac on the day Mr. B’s plum tree decided to bloom.

That is the opening line to a story I’ve been playing with for a while, and like most of my mainstream fiction these days, it is based squarely in my real life. The Princess Gang was a cadre of small girls who used to rule the cul-de-sac, roaming their demesne like a pastel cloud of tulle-swathed glitterati. The plum tree was the Italian plum tree I planted in my front garden long before any of the Princess Gang were even born.

It was nearly twenty years ago that my wife and I drove back from the nursery with two plum trees sticking out of the back of our tiny hatchback, dormant branches rattling. I wanted some fruit trees in the front garden. Knowing the soil there was poor and that the area gets a lot of afternoon warmth, I thought a French or an Italian plum tree—no strangers to challenging conditions—would at least have a hope of survival.

I planted them in deep, wide, soil-emended holes so they could have a fighting chance until their taproots could reach the aquifer that runs beneath our house. Alas, the French plum did not last long, struggling for two seasons before I sent it to its rest. The Italian, however, did much better, and within two years he was blooming in spring, fruiting in summer, and providing me with jams, compotes, and prunes galore in autumn.

Italian plums have always been my favorite. I love how the dusty grey of their untouched skins burnishes to deep purple, how the dark skins hide surprisingly green flesh, and how when ripe they still pack a zing of tartness in every sweet, summery bite. 

In recent years, the neighborhood kids began looking forward to the end of summer when the plums, like heavy tears, began to fall. It was an unusual week when there wasn’t a timid knock that would reveal a tiny person who had been selected to ask “Mr. G” if it was okay to pick some of the plums. The answer was always the same: Of course; help yourself to whatever you can reach or knock down, but no climbing.

This spring, though, I grew concerned when the old paesano failed to bloom. With the changing climate, many of my plants are behaving differently, but if anything I expected him to bloom early, not late. February slipped into March, and still no bloom. I scratch-tested the bark and while there was definite die-back at the extremes, the cambium was still green on the thicker branches. By mid-April, even those branches had died back, and it was clear: the old man was dying.

And so we have another loss in this season of loss. 

Italian plums, like most trees, have definite lifespans, and fifteen-plus years is a fairly good run. Still, I’d hoped for more notice, like a year or two of waning production, not this sudden demise. Had I known we wouldn’t have a bloom this year, I would have paid more attention to last year’s. Luckily, I’d captured my impression of a previous springtime bloom, in the next lines of the story.

All winter long the tree, a gnarled, lichen-clad veteran of decades past, had stretched out twisted, bare, arthritic hands, but now spring had warmed the limbs and every twig and branch was festooned with constellations of white-petaled stars. Chickadees hopped through the high branches, plucking at pale petals, searching for bugs within the blossoms. The petals fell, a gentle snowfall that fluttered down upon the tiaraed heads of the Princess Gang as they gathered in a circle around its thick, grey trunk.

It may seem silly to grieve a tree amid such global difficulties, but I suspect I will not be alone in my mourning. The children of the cul-de-sac, many of them former Princesses, will likely mourn as well the absence its spring beauty, summer shade, and autumn fruit. 

Not all is lost, though. The old man’s legacy survives. Crows and jays have deposited plum pits all down the block, and there are at least two sapling trees growing in neighboring yards. There may be no more knocks on my door, with requests for permission from Mr. G., but someone else will likely take on that easy chore. I hope so, anyway.

With or without us, life goes on.

k