Musings from the Madame

By Barbara Bush (2015)

I love Carbondale surprises!

Five years ago my housemate brought home a sapling that he had won at Dandelion Days. It appeared to be some form of fruit tree and was in a five-gallon bucket.  Time passed and it never got planted.

The tree stayed in the bucket over the winter, pretty much appeared to have died, and in the spring I wanted that bucket for another project.

Of course, the dead stick in the bucket would have one small tiny branch of green new growth at the very bottom. Feeling I had to give it a chance, I planted it in one of the front gardens where it would get sun and water regularly.

Years passed. The stick finally became a shrub and I decorated it for Christmas a couple of years ago with very small and light ornaments to celebrate its survival.

This year with the coming of spring the damn thing blew up!

It was 15-plus feet tall; it had taken over a third of the driveway on either side, and was covered with blossoms. Even after trimming approximately a third of either side away, it was a force to be reckoned with by mere mortals.

As the summer progressed it had become a neighborhood point of discussion as we gathered to wonder what kind of fruit we thought it might bear as the hard green knobs grew into plum sized balls.

Upon returning home after a two-week absence I noticed bright red fist-sized balls on the ground and then I saw them up in the tree!  The branches were bowed as the weight of the burgeoning fruit brought them down.

As they finally ripened to a point of edibility we discovered they were nectarines!

Nectarines in Carbondale — made into incredible tarts, a pie or two, but most of them just eaten in joy and amazement.

Thank you very much mostly dead little stick!

Barbara Bush … once upon a time there was a fairy princess who was adopted by a wonderful town in Colorado …