There's No Chile Here: The Death of the Fruit Tree Blossoms

Apricot Blossoms

From John Nichol's The Milagro Beanfield War:

"The ritual Death of the Fruit Tree Blossoms began toward the end of every March, when, after a long hard winter, warm air coursed lovingly into the Miracle Valley, leading all the fruit trees to believe spring was just around the corner. And, believing this, their sap began running, their buds grew fat, their branches suddenly burst forth into flowers. The air became redolent from apple and pear and plum blossoms, and the locals started wandering around in shirt sleeves, made lazy and soporific and horny by the perfumed air. Farmers greased up their tractors; Nick Rael ordered garden seeds, summer hoses, irrigation boots; and cows groaned and fell down and bore their calves.

Whereupon, inevitably, as certain as death and taxes and the enlargement of Ladd Devine's empire, there ensued a final week of frost and frequently snow that turned into blizzards, and people that had not brought their cows in to calf had those calves frozen to death, and all the fruit tree blossoms were killed, and the subsequent summer came and went without so much as a boo! from a single pear, apple, or plum.

Still, for centuries, because of one masochistic spiritual or genetic flaw or another, Miracle Valley residents had persisted in growing fruit trees, and even in hoping each year that this year a false spring would not set up the trees to be butchered by the little winter that always occurred after the false spring."

This will be an all-to-familiar scenario for anyone who has ever lived in New Mexico. We had been holding our our hopes this year, since the trees all bloomed so late--but apparently not late enough. My mother called this morning to tell me that it got down into the twenties night before last, and all the buds on the apricot tree were black with frost. "The whole valley is in mourning," she said. "I feel like dressing in black today."

I am ever optimistic, however, annual fruit scourge be damned. I know there is some little adobe nook somewhere in northern New Mexico where an apricot tree was sheltered from the cold, and I intend to find it!