The apple tree
I am in lockdown in Paris. Each lockdown is its own variation on a domestic theme, but that variation is, no matter what, conditioned by its surroundings. People in the countryside have nature all around them. They can walk on the grass, touch plants, contemplate landscapes. Parisians have very little green to look at, let alone to frolick in. The minerality of the place feels brutal. Because this moment, it seems to me, enhances so much our need for nature.
I feel this all the more because I am lucky enough to have outdoor space despite living in the center of town, and plenty of green. Never until now have these plants felt so eloquent, beseeching me to stand by them, and care for them. I spend time outside – it is the only safe outside we have now anyway. So may as well enjoy it. I used to ask a friend who specializes in urban landscaping to help me with the terraces, and as a result I did little gardening. Now I am caring for these plants, getting earth under my nails with relish, as if my life depended on how much their thriving in turn depends on my care and attention.
About a year ago, my friend purchased for me a young apple tree. She bought it, as she did many other plants and sapplings, at the massive wholesale space at Rungis, on the road to Orly airport, where market sellers go at dawn each day to buy the goods they’ll sell in the outdoor markets we love. Right now, markets are shut. And Rungis is a morgue for the overflow of people killed by Covid19.
The apple tree spent a year in sadness. We didn’t turn on the automatic irrigation early enough last year and it barely grew a leaf in the spring. Worse - I let wooly aphid settle on it despite my gardener friend entreating me to periodically wipe it off, with an organic mixture of black soap and olive oil she had left for me. Under lockdown, I started paying attention. I clean the tree and my younger son has named it (Alberto). We check in on it every morning - and yes even speak to it. I watch out for those white patches of aphid on the still slim bark and clean them off. I caress the branches. The tree is growing, shooting leaves, blossoming with white and red flowers that promise autumn fruit. It is still somewhat timid and young, but starting to thrive. I never thought I’d ever feel emotionally invested in nurturing a tree.
But it makes sense this should be happening these days. We are by now cut down to size, as so many people have noted. And that means that we are back to a natural state of sorts, from which, let us hope, we can recoup. It is throwing a natural light, without filters, on our social state – from household to world, via neighborhood, city, nation. We are seeing the lives we were leading until now in all their hues, without artificial light. We all feel that nature is our home, since we are part of nature too, and that we have done it so much harm – doing ourselves, and hence each other, so much harm as well.
The economy we have built upon activity is weighed down by inactivity. In our household, we are spending perhaps 25% of what we normally spend each month, if that. Good for us, terrible for the economy. If no one spends, no one earns. We are only, or mostly, purchasing food. But since we only eat organic food, from small farm shops if we can get there, whatever we are spending is going straight to the sustenance of sustainable agriculture. There is an economic justice here. Just as I now care for my garden more than ever before, so we can all realize how crucial it is to tend to the planet and start investing, truly, in those practices that will protect animals from us, and us from the viruses that they harbour. Never before has the meaning of the term “sustainability” rang with such force. We need to start living sustainably, now. And when we exit this lockdown that is constraining us to live with such sobriety, we must find a way to ensure the economy is buoyed by this principle. People are dying. But the bleak state of the planet is such that many more will die if we don’t take this opportunity to undo the wrongs we have wrought. We must start cultivating our garden, globally, everywhere – in the metaphorical sense that Voltaire meant in Candide, but also literally. Help the apple tree actually blossom.
Paris, April 18th, 2020