Apple Blossoms

Pam photographed this exuberant bough of apple blossoms and texted it to me this afternoon. A timely gift! On a damp, gray day with more setbacks than victories, this blissful burst from Rosslyn’s orchard abuzz with honeybees and hummingbirds was the perfect pick-me-up. Thank you, Pam!

I’m reminded of this excerpt from my May 2, 2012 orchard rumination.

Gardeners, landscapers, poets and painters have romanced the seasonal blossoms of fruit trees for hundreds of years. I am no exception despite my utilitarian, upcountry ways. An orchard is a geometric bouquet of blooms, an annual riot against leafless canopies and gray, drizzly spring days. And even when blossoms flutter earthward and the boughs fill with thick plumes of adolescent foliage, there remains a subtle nobility in the orchard’s orderly procession. (Source: Orchard Rumination)

A subtle nobility, yes, and a considerably less subtle infusion of optimism. A hopefulness, a confidence even, that resonates in this poem as well. 

And just as you find

yourself at the end
of winter’s long, cold
rope, the blossoms open

like pink thimbles
and that black dollop
of shine called

bumblebee stumbles in.

— Susan Kelly-Dewitt, “Apple Blossoms” (Source: Poetry Foundation)

Cheers to the apple blossoms and to the pollinators — you among them, Pam —who ensure that they will bear fruit.