GOOD-BYE PEACH TREE!

Peach tree stump & roots.

This photo isn't some space alien.  It's the roots of what's left of our peach tree after we pulled it out last week. It took quite a lot of digging and pulling -- thanks, Lonn & Kim.  It wasn't diseased, but it was the victim of  broken branches and bad pruning jobs over the years. I loved the big juicy peaches, but the branches that were still producing fruit were so high that I couldn't reach them. And since it was growing on a slope, ladder-climbing was always a scary prospect for me. .

Hole where peach tree once stood, filled with water to aid the pulling.

This is actually the second peach tree we've had in our yard.  The first one was growing just fine for over ten years, with wonderful sweet peaches, on a nice flat part of the backyard. As a new fruit-grower, I didn't realize that all peach trees are not the same. Mine produced sweet, flavorful peaches, but they had a cling stone that was hard to remove.

Then my husband, Kim, had the idea to build a shed in that nice flat spot. He knew I wasn't keen on that. While I was in Sacramento for a couple of days covering a National Chicken Cook-Off, he brought in a backhoe to dig out that spot. By the time I came home, the tree was gone and a shed partially installed.  I didn't even get to say good-bye.

So I planted Tree Number 2 in a different spot. But ten years later, I sadly knew that last fall would be its last harvest.

I'm not saying good-bye to peaches, however. I'll be buying a new tree soon.  I'm going to plant it back the flat sunny spot where Tree Number 1 used to be.  It happened that our city zoning didn't like Kim's placement for a shed any more than I did, so the shed is long gone.
  
And now that I'm much wiser about caring for peach trees, I feel certain it will be around for a long time.