I've always thought that "forcing" blooms and bulbs sounds so aggressive. Yet here I am, with several small branches of our Hollywood plum tree blossomed beautifully in a pint jar on my kitchen table in January. It feels like the spring before spring; I know that it's coming.
After pruning our fruit trees last weekend, we went back for small shoots of the dark red wood. The Hollywood plum will bloom before the Shiro, and so we chose this one to force inside.
I can't remember a time I was as intimate with a tree as I was when I trimmed several of the fruit trees in our orchard in anticipation of spring. Gently clipping their dead leaves and twigs, old plums from last year, and crisscrossing branches, it felt as if I was taking care of an old friend. Washing and brushing their hair perhaps, and then braiding it for them in one long plait down their back. To touch so much of a tree, to put my hands on every single branch and twig, felt overwhelmingly special. Even though the trees would stay in the ground, weathering the next few months. a small part of them would see spring right away. We would force them to.
To help someone or something grow more, is to have them let you in. I guess this brings up the question of consent in nature, but I am choosing to believe that the trees in our fruit orchard don't mind being there, and appreciate assistance to help them grow.
Under the Tu B'shevat full moon, the small light pink petals stayed pressed together tightly, under a few layers of the outer bud. They will pass under the Snow Moon and the Worm Moon before they see the sun, and the newly trimmed branches then two months old, that will hold the sweet fruit children they will make with the bees.
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