Questioning Hope

April 30, 2022. This is a mix of reflective and forward views. I’ve chosen the plum blossom as hope’s portrait based on the annual cycle of blossoms to fruit but also for personal associations.

As a child growing up in arid West Texas our backyard was blessed with Daddy’s fruit trees. The largest were a pair of Texas Plum trees planted a couple of yards apart but grown together with outer limbs drooped to the ground surrounding – a tent beneath those branches – tall enough for adults to stand upright, with trunks sufficiently sturdy to climb up for a sit between foliage above and sand below. A fantastic hide-away! Spring blooms brought hope: soon leaves would return, my refuge re-established.

Last summer we planted a small Texas Plum in our Central Texas back yard – photo taken earlier this month conveys my hope this little tree will grow, grow, grow as I age, age, age – my companion.

25 thoughts on “Questioning Hope”

  1. Beautiful. The photo, the poem, and the memories.
    Do you remember the time you lit a lot of little birthday candles and stuck them in the trees? The effect was magical. Mother was out there supervising; I was indoors watching television. When i came outside, the trees were full of lights–like little stars come down to roost. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite that wonderful in 78 years of seeing wonderful things.

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      1. Hello – This is likely my first poem about the plum trees and definitely my first poem speaking to Hope in such fashion. [Been poeting since my daughter got me hooked back in late 1990s – no computer back then and she’d ask me to spell check her poems.]

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    2. Oh WOW – NO memory of the birthday candles. But I can easily envision the effects, thank you! Must have been a weekend, Mother not at work, free to let her own little-girl impulses take stage. Did Daddy come in to get you? I’ve wondered many times about the plum trees being untrimmed, growing down to the ground – thinking perhaps this was to make it easier for Mother to collect plums for her annual jelly-making.

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  2. That’s lovely Jazz. I don’t often praise hope this way. The image from your childhood with those interconnected trees is a nice match to the idea of hope too. To buoy us up and protect us, thanks for this…pretty blossoms too!

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    1. Bill, thanks – this poem startled me emerging. One of those that writes itself and I just sort of follow along. The plum blossoms earlier this month revived a lot of memories and my sister Carolyn has just shared one more – plum trees a key part of my formative years!

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      1. Love when they write themselves for sure! That’s the best. And I saw that note from your sister too, so nice.

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  3.  What a lovely poem! So appreciated.  Janice Keller Kvale, PhD, FACNM 4818 Berkman Drive Austin TX 78723 You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. C.S. Lewis

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  4. This is beautiful Jazz! I am becoming more aware of how trees have inspired me at times of my life and I appreciate them even more now. There is something universal maybe about kids finding refuge in trees?

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    1. Thanks, Betty – you may be right. I had one apple tree I called “mine” as well as the plum tree umbrella. In the apple tree I could get myself up under the canopy, “invisible” unless someone knew to look, and yet still see outward. But not comfortable for long! I love the expression “tree hugging” and indulge literally frequently!

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    1. Thank you! It’s intriguing to see such a little plum tree and ponder how that old backyard looked when the ones I recall as huge were tiny beginners. And to ponder how my current yard will look 10 years from now – will there be any UNshaded patches?

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  6. What a beautiful companion you have with your history woven with plum trees. Oh, how I would have loved a tree like that growing up. I am glad you have another one to be your companion on your new journeys. Beautiful close-up, photo, prose, and poem.

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    1. Thank you, LuAnne. I’m excited about the new plum tree. Little chance of becoming a tent for privacy like the one I grew up with given totally different setting (and I’m a bit taller!) But its blooms (and maybe fruit?) are catalysts for feeling youthful, that urge to go recluse myself awhile … the new plum tree one of many leafy “screens” that make my backyard very private.

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    1. Yes, indeed hope is resilient. Even before I matured enough to recognize Hope as ever-present within and surrounding me. My purpose writing this one was to recognize Hope’s presence throughout my life and to assert my intent to go wherever it leads. So many conflicting forces surround – Hope is the one I can lean on, trust, follow.

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  10. This brings back memories of my own (of my children). For the longest time, I lived in a home built in the late 1950s. Fruit trees were planted along the 200 ft. deep side of the lot – three Mcintosh apples in the front and one each of pear, peach, and tart cherry along the back half. The peach was gone by the time I moved in in 1975 and the cherry within another 10 years. But those apples… they lasted well past the 1990s. The pear was always too small for my sons to climb, but those apples had some massive limbs. One of my favorite photos is of them together, maybe 1988, one at 9 yrs. and the other at 5, their faces eager, in the branches of one of the trees.

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    1. So glad your kids had apple trees to climb in! Thanks for sharing. Several apple trees in our yard, in row paralleling the clothes lines. I’m not at all athletic, but the desire to be up among the apple leaves was a strong motivator with branches suitable for sitting – for quite a while some days!

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