The Apple Tree

When we bought our house in Grand Rapids' Garfield Park neighborhood 23 years ago, there was a small apple tree in front. Not long after we moved in, a neighbor informed us that the tree had grown from the stump of the last remaining apple tree in an orchard long ago replaced by houses.

A few years ago, we were working in the yard when a car stopped, a woman got out, and said her father had grown up in our house, which had been built by his parents. We gave her and her daughter a tour of the house and said how much we loved it. In return, the visitor sent a number of photographs of the house in its early days. One photo was of the front of the house. There was no sign of a tree.

As the tree grew, it blocked the view of our house from the street, detracting from what is sometimes called curb appeal. It also blocks the view of the neighborhood from the room I use as an office. My persistent but feeble attempts at pruning never improved the tree's productivity. In its most productive year, the tree provided us with perhaps a bushel of apples, not very flavorful and good for little other than some bland apple sauce. We may have done better leaving them to drop and feed the deer who wander up from the Plaster Creek corridor.

I had determined that it was past time to cut the tree down. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and telecommuting. In May and June of 2020, I watched Baltimore orioles just a few feet from the desk in my home office frequently browse the branches for whatever it is they eat. OK, I thought, the tree can stay. In 2021 and 2022 there were far fewer orioles, but I saw a variety of warblers and other birds stop by on their migrations.

This fall, golden-crowned kinglets browsed the tree. What is the collective name for kinglets? A host, as of sparrows? A charm, as of finches? A courtlet of kinglets? As children, Gary Vander Pol and I once shot a ruby-crowned kinglet with his BB gun, thinking it was a sparrow (all smallish birds were sparrows, weren't they?). We were treated with a close-up of its beauty, and a sense of guilt for having killed it. Since then I had never seen another kinglet (or, more likely, I saw one from a distance and thought it a sparrow). Until this fall.

We are now getting ready to sell the house and move across the state. (The neighbor who told the tale of the apple orchard is still our neighbor, as are most of the other families who lived here when we moved in.) If we wait until Spring to sell, the crab apple tree across the driveway will be a riot of pink and red blossoms. The apple tree will be putting out leaves that obscure the view of our house from the street, and vice versa. Unlike the crab apple, the apple tree is likely a liability to the value of the house.

But its not a liability to the birds, and we won't be cutting it down. New owners might. But I suspect they'll be told it represents the last remnant of an ancient orchard.