by Keri Withington
When spring came, we still wore masks to leave the house, still sanitized hands, groceries. The figs we planted for your birthday, too small to even be proper saplings at the edge of the orchard, seemed like nothing more than sticks pushed in to wet soil. We wrapped a towel around them on the coldest nights to protect the roots, kept hay around them to save them from frost. Yet February passed, March, April. The two plums blossomed, then held tiny green fruit, dangling like baubles. The native bees crawled out of their bamboo stick nests, clay holes, circled the clusters of apple blossoms, sometimes sleeping in the petals, bellies full of nectar. Still the figs didn’t grow. We checked the orchard mornings, picking caterpillars off the pears, looking for fig leaves that weren’t there. Finally, at the garden center to buy pots, we saw fig trees for sale, impulse bought replacements, taller than the ones we had, unfurled leaves the size of my hands. We brought them home, ready to dig holes by the dead trees, only to see the first, small leaves, still wrapped around themselves. The figs had grown, leaves pushing from the stalk while we were out. We changed clothes after the shop, just in case of germs, controlling what we can.
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