Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Rachel Flaster has won our writing contest on the theme Color Our World with her piece "Green."
Rachel Flaster is an attorney who lives in Kansas City. Her nine-to-five is conducting legal research and drafting appellate opinions. Her five-to-nine is reading and writing mysteries.
Green
We bought our first house six years ago. We knew nothing. We were so green!
Within a year our sewage pipe broke (guess we should have paid extra for the sewer line inspection), tiny cracks emerged in our drywall (guess we should have paid extra for the structural inspection), and water—a slow but steady drip-drip-drip—leaked into our fireplace every time it rained (what does the standard inspection even cover?).
But at least there were apple trees in the backyard. Three of them. They didn’t seem to produce fruit, but they still provided benefits: shade, privacy, a home for the birds who, fast-forward to 2020, became my work-from-home colleagues, their antics viewed from my home-office window both a source of entertainment and tenuous connection to the outside world.
A couple years into the pandemic, for reasons still unknown to me, the trees started to grow apples. Like really grow apples. By June all three trees were laden with lime-colored orbs. I waited, ecstatic for them to grow big, dreaming of the pies and applesauce I’d make with all that fruit. Would I have to learn to can?
But I wasn’t the only one excited about the apples. The squirrels got almost every one of them, cutting off their lives while still young and verdant, leaving them wasted and rotting on the grass, barely eaten. The squirrels only wanted them for their seeds. In frustration, I picked an apple off a tree before a squirrel got it. One bite told me that was a bad idea: it was so bitter I spit it out, the squirrels’ eating habits now making sense to me.
The following year the trees produced even more fruit. So many apples that the squirrels couldn’t keep up. A few apples made it to full size. And turned red! I bit into one but it was just as before, the bitterness causing my mouth to pucker. I spit that one out too.
Not only were the trees growing apples, but they, themselves, were growing. The view from my office became nothing but tree. In spring, the flowers were breathtaking. For two weeks in April, I struggled to look away from the window.
Not once did the thought cross my mind that they were getting too big. A tree too big? With too many flowers? And too many apples? Was there such a thing? Abso-[bleeping]-lutely, thought my husband, probably. He handled the lawn mowing.
In June of this year, the trees breached the back deck. Their pregnant branches hung over the railings, encroaching upon the flower pots, threatening the sanctity of the grill. When I sat outside reading, it was between green-apple curtains, their smell fragrant like a floral jolly rancher. I know what you’re thinking—a jolly rancher, really? But until these trees a jolly rancher had been my touchstone for green apple, and old habits die hard.
One afternoon it rained—not even stormed, just sprinkled—and a whole tree came down, its apple-swollen limbs too much for the trunk to handle. Shocked, I gaped at the mound of branches heaped upon the lawn. Countless emerald apples.
It had never occurred to me to trim the trees, to do anything to care for them other than admire them. That pruning would prolong their lives. My trees were big, I had thought, so I must be a seasoned home owner. Finally!
Looking out at the remains of my tree, I now knew that wasn’t true.
How was I still so green?
