Along the Way

ALONG THE WAY A Little Bit of Plain Tree Talk Brings Results

Remember, it wasn't all that long ago people would tell you it was impossible to send pictures through the air. Yet at this very moment some are passing through your body on their way to somebody's cathode ray tube. And it wasn't all that long ago that skeptic-me believed plants were incapable of thought. Can anyone forget Clint Eastwood singing "I Talk to the Trees" in Paint Your Wagon? And admitting they didn't listen to him?

When my wife, Vicki, and I moved into our new (to us) home in northwest Phoenix, we had nine mature trees on the property, among them a grapefruit tree. I looked at it, put my hands on my hips and said to her, "Wouldn't you know, I love oranges and orange juice, and lemons especially on the rim of a Margarita glass, or in lemonade but, ha... what do we get? A grapefruit tree." I let the sarcasm show when I said "grapefruit."

Although I gave the yard and trees normal maintenance and care, two years later the grapefruit tree had failed to produce other than a dozen fruits, no bigger than lemons. Then the answer was delivered into my living room by pictures travelling through the air: an expert on plant behavior reported that when he played the grunts, groans, and shrillness of rock music, the plant being experimented upon withered and was certain to die.

As treatment he played classics, such as Tchaikovsky's waltz from "The Sleeping Beauty." A little Gershwin, perhaps. Chopin? Not only did the plant recover, it thrived in its refreshed environment.

I said to Vicki, "It is time I had a little talk with the grapefruit tree."

Vicki smiled knowingly "Tree," I said, "or should I call you 'Pinky?' I knew it was a pink grapefruit tree. "I want to apologize to you. I sometimes get carried away with my freedom-of-speech privileges. Anyway, I am going to try to make up for it. From now on, I'm going to trim you artfully and give you all the water you could possibly want. Maybe a shot of iron.

"When I'm around other grapefruit trees, I'm going to tell them how beautiful you are, and that you are working hard to bring forth for me, your friend. Even hug you occasionally, and periodically I will bring out a tape recorder and play some classics for you." I am paraphrasing here, as the speech was considerably longer, and I cannot remember it all.

"Do you have a favorite composer?" I asked. But, there was no answer.

"How'd it go?" asked Vicki. "Rather one-sided," I replied. "Whoops, I forgot something." I raced back out into the yard. "And if you don't produce," I said to Pinky, "I'm uprooting you and shipping you out of Arizona off to one of those frozen-waste states like New York or northern Florida.I may even cut you down."

Well, as the nonskeptic will suspect, Pinky really did fulfill the following season, producing bountiful and beautiful fruit. It awed me that Pinky didn't, and doesn't more than 20 years later topple under the sheer weight of his/her load. I have completely reevaluated the taste of grapefruit, Pinky's fruit anyway. It's terrific, the sweetest I have ever known.

But the element of this saga that amazes me most is two of our mulberry trees died within six months of my lecture. The neighbors blamed it on the trees' age. But I know better: being unable to produce grapefruit and having overheard the consequences, the stress killed them.