Dad's Plum Tree

Several years ago Dad planted a plum tree in our front yard and he was very excited about it. He watered his little plum tree and every year it would get a little taller but never did it produce a single plum.
"Next year." Dad would say confidently.

Two years ago I suggested that the plum tree might need it's male or female counterpart.
"It needs what?" Dad said to me skeptically, as though this was just another of my fantastical stories. A plum tree romance.
"Some fruit plants need a male and a female in order to produce fruit." I told him. "Like blueberries!"
Dad stared and me and then dismissed my thoughts. "Nah. It's one of those that can do it by itself."
"A self-pollinater?" I asked him.
"Yeah! One of those! Self-pollinater." he said.

So I left Dad there with his plum tree. Perhaps they've come up with self-pollinating fruit bushes by now. I don't know. I don't keep up with these things and it saved me from having to teach Dad about the Birds and the Bee's. Another summer passed by with no fruit on the tree. "Next year's gonna be our year!" Dad would say and every year the plum tree let us down. "I can feel it this time Lulu! Next year!"
Dad and I began to laugh at the process of checking the tree and reciting 'next year.' just in case it would motivate the plum tree to be a plum tree.

Last month I came over to find Dad eyeballing the tree. When I asked him what he was doing he told me that he's planning on relocating it. "I'm going to plant it in Bob's yard. It's just not producing here."
"Dad you can't give up on the plum tree! We've worked so hard. You've waited so long. Maybe, just for fun, we should buy it a girlfriend plum tree and see if they want to make little ones!"
"No Lulu. It's a pollener."
"A self-pollinater?"
"Yeah."

And so Dad plans to move the plum tree to a nice area in Grandaddy Bob's yard and while he's at it he's planting two lemon trees. I felt bad about how bummed Dad was that he never grew any plums. I found it a sad notion that he would never see fruit in his tree so just before dinner one night, I snuck out into the yard and hung plums from it's slender branches. I ran inside and said "Dad come look! Something amazing happened overnight!" and I walked him over to the tree.
I figured he would know instantly what I had done once he saw the plums but I forget that he is an aging man and in the blur of his everyday vision he could only see the plums, not the bright white poultry string and packing tape they were dangling from and he let out, with childish astonishment, "Oh Wow!!!" and his gait quickened as he bounded towards a great disappointment.

It was less than a moment when he figured it out and he plucked one plum from it's dangling string and then boy did he laugh.