Ripe

These are the first apples in our orchard, plump and firm and almost ready for picking. It is a joy to see them.

I lost eight trees the first time I planted my orchard, four years ago, oblivious to the deer who savor the sweet, tender leaves of apple saplings. Eight trees. I learned my lesson.

Three years ago, I kept my new potted trees sheltered behind the screen on my porch - a halfway house between domesticity and the wilds. They grew tall and leafed out and were clearly ready to spread their roots.

Two years ago I placed them in the ground, on my front yard, out among the storms and deer and sun and rain. I draped them with netting, covered them in mesh, shielding them from the long, searching tongues of the deer. The act felt sacred, like a gowning or investiture. My trees were now somehow ordained - for what I do not know.

It was a stop-gap measure. The netting protected them, but it also constrained them. Their gangly, youthful branches kept tangling in the net. I had to regularly, gently loose them from their bindings and reset the net a bit higher. Sometimes in the process, a leaf or two tore.

How to balance protection and freedom?

This year we placed lattices around the trees and netting around the lattices. That promised to keep the deer away, which it did, as long as I minded the nets and mended them when they tore. So save for a few branch tips and leaves that were consumed when I was inattentive, the trees thrived and the apples grew.

This year, four years after my first failed orchard, we have apples. Twelve to be precise. Nine on the smaller tree and three on the larger one. (I should have pruned it early in the spring - no doubt it would have sprouted more blossoms and boasted more fruit. Hopefully, we will both do better next season.)

The five apples on the smaller tree seem ripe. They are full and red and hang heavy on their branches. But are they ready? Do they need another rain? Another week? Should we hold onto them just a little bit longer? Perhaps the better question is not whether the apples are ready for picking but is the branch ready to let them go?

My husband and I have decided. We know when we are going to pick the apples. Today, the day we take our baby, our youngest son, to college and send him off to set down roots in the fertile soil of his choosing.