Boris’s Plum Tree

This time of year plum blossoms of volunteer trees planted by scavenging coyotes, deer, and birds, skip through the forest foliage. They are descendants of those prune orchards of prohibition. Butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds are delighted! Today some trees bear only swollen buds, insuring this bloom will go on for weeks; some are laced with delicate deep pink blossoms; some, like the tree closest to the goat pen, are thick with showy, white flowers. This tree is the first to bloom, the one whose pruned branches I force each January, and the one favored by our beloved goat Boris.

This was his favorite tree in the world! As he grew older, we let him spend time alone protected from the other goats, eating plums. He would nap, then wake to eat more, leaving piles of pits where he had been ruminating. He was still eating those plums the June morning he died at age 14, of old age.