HOW NONNA’S LITTLE TREE TAUGHT OUR FAMILY A BIG LESSON IN FAITH AND PATIENCE) "FAITH IS BELIEVING IN SOMETHING WHEN COMMON SENSE TELLS US NOT TO"
These days, our Santa Clara Valley is known the world over as the site of the Silicon Valley, where high tech companies spring up and grow overnight to incredible heights.
However, our Santa Clara Valley was once renowned as the nation's leading grower of fruit and vegetables. Thousands of acres of fruit trees of all kinds and types flourished in our valley. My grandparents, like many young immigrants, planted and maintained a bountiful fruit ranch in the fertile Valley. It was in the shade of one of these trees where my own family roots would grow and where I would learn valuable family lessons that would stay with me a lifetime.
I was 10 years old when my grandparents came to live with us. Our suburban house wasn't very large, but it did have a spacious back lot where Grandma could grow her beloved vegetables and fruit trees.
I regarded grandma's anticipation for spring gardening as some sort of seasonal madness. What else could explain the way she mixed fertilizer into the earth with such enthusiasm?
Grandma worked in her garden every day, so often and for so long a time that she almost became invisible at it. She loved her garden, bringing to it every little scrap of knowledge she had gathered in the fields and orchards.
If the soil was too wet for roses, she knew instinctively the right amount of sand and pebbles to add to the earth. Grandma was comfortable using her bare hands as she was a hand trowel in her garden.
It took me a long time to understand grandma's eager passion for growing things. Not until I was on my own, many years later, did I find any satisfaction in planting seeds or in watching them grow.
During the spring and summer season, grandma was especially busy in her garden pulling up weeds from between her tomato plants, giving support to her bean poles, and tenderly patting her robust zucchini.
One spring, our family's desire for a backyard swimming pool circumvented grandma's gardening joys. The above- ground pool was 4 feet deep and 50 feet round, its dimensions took up the whole backyard.
Graciously, grandma agreed to give up her backyard vegetable garden so we could install the play pool. But when it came time to cut down one of her young seedling trees, which was right in the path of our new swimming pool, Grandma staunchly protested. She insisted the tree was going to bear sweet nectarines, if only we'd have a little faith, and patience.
Grandpa, an expert tree grower, swore on his knowledge as an orchardist, that the seedling was nothing more than a wild, bitter peach tree. What more proof did grandma need?
But Grandma's belief in her tree was unshaken. She gave a catalog of reasons why the tree should be spared.
Begrudgingly, the family gave in to grandma's poignant pleas and settled on a smaller swimming pool. When we complained that our pool wasn't as big as our neighbor's swimming pool, Grandma would say, in her best broken English, "Wait and see, children, wait and see, this little tree will give you more pleasure through the years than a thousand swimming pools."
"Wait-‘n-see ... Wait-‘n-see", you and your 'ol Wait 'n see tree", I sarcastically mocked grandma's words.
By the end of summer, our enthusiasm for the swimming pool had waned. The pool had become a nuisance. One of us had to clean it everyday with an underwater vacuum system. And no one liked testing the water's chemical balance nor the daily pouring of chlorine into the water. Plus, it attracted all kinds of flying bugs and insects.
The plastic pool was packed away .
Meanwhile, Grandma's "Wait-n'-see tree", as it had come to be known, had grown, taller and stronger with each season, but still bore no fruit.The following summer, backyard barbecues were all the fad. Dad and grandpa began work on a patio deck. Once again, Grandma's tree was smack in the middle of our plans.
Once again, we approached grandma and once again she raced to her tree’s side, and with the theatrics of a grand Puccini opera she heroically defended it from Grandpa’s ax, placing herself in front of the tree, like a mother protecting her child. Then, with great passion and commitment, she declared: "Things that endure, take time to create".
Grandma’s actions, as well as her deep belief in her words, had again won a reprieve for her little tree.
That spring, Grandma's wait- and-see-tree managed to produce a few pale little leaves and tiny blossoms, but nothing that would indicate a robust nectarine crop.
As grandma gardened, I'd hear her singing Italian arias to her wisp of a fruit tree. When I laughed at her for singing to a tree, she'd say, in her native language, "Faith, is believing in something when common sense tells you not to... Have some faith and this summer, you'll be picking baskets of your favorite fruit."
With the coming of warm spring days, tiny green bumps of fruit began to emerge on the branches of grandma's wait-and-see-tree. But still, the tree drew no interest from me. Like the rest of my family, I was sure the tree would bare bitter fruit.
It was late July when the small buds matured into rosy-red nectarines. Grandma's tree had burgeoned forth with plump, ripe, juicy, fruit. The tree's spindly branches arched and bowed under the weight of the roly-poly, mouthwatering nectarines - so big and round, we'd never seen their equal.
That summer, along with the sweet nectarines, grandma's family ate a lot of crow. But grandma was too busy picking nectarines for canning season, to say "I told you so", her high-beam smile said it all.
Every year, thereafter, like a springtime Christmas tree, each branch glistened with red and gold ornaments of fruit. Its enduring green leaves and golden red harvest an indelible reminder of the depth of grandma's faith, love and patience.
In the coming years, grandma's tree continued to grow. And, as our family grew and changed along with it, we learned to give to one another just as the tree had so generously given to us.Grandma, like other gardeners, was inspired by the sense of creation and the feeling of accomplishment that gardening brings. It took me a long time to understand grandma's eager passion for growing things. Not until I was on my own, many years later, did I find any satisfaction in planting seeds or watching them grow. I've inherited grandma's desire to grow things and today a tree, grown from the fruit of her original tree, grows outside my back door, a reminder of her faith.
People are more familiar now with the idea that plants, like humans, respond to the warmth of a human voice, have feelings, and can sense moods and music. I can't swear that grandma's singing to her tree encouraged its production of such extraordinary fruit. But I suspect, from watching grandma and her tree, that things happen when you truly believe in them and the belief in something can make it happen.
Luther Burbank once wrote, "Love is the secret to improved gardening." That's quite a statement for a man of science, but, like grandma, devoted gardeners everywhere believe it to be true.
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