Tuesday, September 2, 2008

The Color of a Cherry

When I planted a Kwanzan cherry tree in my front yard in 2002, I never knew that it would thrill me twice a year. Every spring I enjoy the cotton-candy pink fluffy flowers. They're crimped and floppy like unstarched petticoats nodding from heavy waists as if wilting. In late summer, I get a second show (that is, when the birds don't get to the tree first): the beautiful little clumps of cherries clinging to their fragile stems and each other for sun and ripening.
What I love most about the tree and its fruit is the show of colors -- in spring from pale pink to powder-pink to girlie-pink to poodle-skirt pink to full-on fuchsia mixed with apple green and painfully blue sky and in late summer from insect-eaten emerald green to forest green to chartreuse and splotchy red like a kiss deepening from a blush to bloody passion.

It's a good tree, I think. It's a beautiful companion, I know.

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