You Gotta Start Caring for Them

A Story About Apple Trees, Neglect, and Coming into Relationship

Our annual pilgrimage across the Hudson River to Rose Hill Farm was underway. Kids in a wagon, apple cider donuts in their bellies, smiles on their faces, and their bags ready for a giant haul. This early fall afternoon was perfection.

We walked between towering rows of honeycrisp trees, branches sagging under the weight of apples. Fruit scattered everywhere on the ground—some fresh from the night before, others already soft and brown. I stepped around what I could, crushed the rest.

I looked at my wife. “I can’t wait until the honeycrisp in our backyard is producing like these bad boys.”

Eliza laughed. “Are you kidding me? We have a long way to go. Our trees are pathetic.”

I knew she wasn’t being mean, just telling the truth. She was right—the trees were struggling.

I didn’t say anything. I just put my head down and kept squashing rotten apples that got in my way. But I couldn’t stop seeing it—the chasm between these trees and the stagnant ones in our backyard.

—

Later that day, I was back home on the deck grilling. I looked out toward my kids playing in the backyard, then left toward the side of the yard where our apple trees live.

Bare branches. Thin trunks. The beds completely overgrown with weeds. I hadn’t touched them in well over a year. Most days I just walked past, never really seeing them.

Four years. Four years in the ground and this is where we are. Barely alive.

I bought them on a whim, put them in the ground, built cages around them, and thought that would be enough. It wasn’t.

Shame. Embarrassment. My neglect was staring me in the face.

—

A few weeks later, my daughter’s preschool took a field trip to Wrightman Fruit Farm just up the road. It was foggy, damp after an early morning rain. One of the first days that felt like fall was settling in.

The farm has been in the family since 1986. The son now runs it with his father, both of them knowing every tree on the property. I spotted Junior by the entrance—mid-30s, work boots, faded jeans, hands that had spent decades in soil. I approached him while my daughter was painting a pumpkin.

“Hey, got a second?”

“Sure thing,” he said walking towards me with a welcoming smile. “How can I help?”

“I have these apple trees—a few Honeycrisp and Jonathans. They’ve been in the ground for more than four years and they’re really struggling. I haven’t done much other than an occasional spring cleanup. Do you have any tips?”

He nodded, not surprised. “You gotta start caring for them.”

Like Eliza, he wasn’t being harsh. Just real.

“Get your soil tested. You need to know the pH levels, whether you need lime, nitrogen, or other minerals. You’ll need to prune. And there’s more. Spring feeding, pest management, and mulching at the right time. You can learn about this on YouTube.”

“Okay. When do I need to do all this?”

“Reset the beds by Halloween. Don’t wait till the ground freezes. Prune in February. The rest, you’ll learn as you go.” He said it without any effort, like he’d walked others through this a thousand times.

I stood there taking it in and mentally repeating to myself. Resetting the beds. Soil testing. pH levels. Lime. Nitrogen. Pruning schedules. Halloween deadline. Shit, this is getting complex.

I was clueless. I didn’t know any of this.

“Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.”

He nodded. “Of course. Good luck with them.”

I turned around to find my daughter sampling her fifth apple of the day. I took out my phone, opened my task list, and wrote: “Apple Trees – start caring for them.”

—

Last weekend, just one day after Halloween, I got to work.

I stepped into my backyard to survey the beds. I could see my breath in the early morning freeze. Winter is coming. Perfect timing.

I gathered all of my equipment—shovel, rake, scissors, wheelbarrow, and gloves.

I pulled off the cages first. Cut the zip ties, and they came apart easily. The wooden stakes I’d driven into the ground four years ago were barely holding. They’d all rotted at the base. I removed them and set them aside.

Then I started clearing.

First, the weeds. Dense, tangled, everywhere—inside the beds, around the beds, choking the base of each tree. I pulled them by hand, roots and all.

My daughters were playing nearby, running through the yard with their hula hoops. Every few minutes one of them would come over. “Daddy, can I help?” I’d hand her a small pile of weeds to carry to the compost.

I grabbed the wheelbarrow and shovel and began scooping out the decomposed mulch—four, maybe five inches of it, mixed with leaves, weeds, and rocks. The smell of earth and decay, rich and damp.

Trip after trip to the back of the woods where I was dumping it. I lost count of how many loads. What surprised me was how much I had to clear just to expose the soil. The beds had been completely buried under years of neglect.

An hour in, I realized this wasn’t going to be a quick job. This was going to take four to five hours over several days.

Once the beds were bare, I could see how much I’d neglected. Bare soil, finally visible. The cages weren’t just weak—they were useless. The whole system needed to be rebuilt.

I drove to the hardware store and bought metal T-stakes. Six feet tall, galvanized steel, the kind that won’t rot. Back home, I set up my ladder and started driving them into the ground with a post driver.

Each stake took real force—lifting the driver overhead, slamming it down, feeling the impact travel up through my arms and into my shoulders. The sound of metal hitting metal, then the duller thud as the stake sank into earth. Hit rocks more than once. Had to pull stakes out, reposition, start over.

My youngest brought me water. “Are you almost done, Dada?”

“Yeah, love. I’ll be done in an hour.”

By Saturday afternoon, my hands were blistered, covered in dirt, fingernails black. The muscles in my shoulders burned. But I kept going.

Sunday morning, I woke up sore. My back, my arms, my legs. I could feel exactly where I’d been working.

I went back outside to finish. The air was cool again, but the sun was out. I could hear the birds also getting ready for the winter. I installed trunk guards around each tree—wrapping them carefully around the thin trunks, securing them to protect against rodents. I rebuilt the cages with new zip ties, pulling them tight. Added three fresh inches of mulch to each bed, the smell of fresh wood chips mixing with the cold air.

One wheelbarrow at a time. One stake at a time. One tree at a time. No rushing. The sound of the post driver. The resistance of the earth. The texture of bark under my hands as I fitted the guards. The raw smell of broken ground. My breath visible in the cold.

Sunday evening, after the last bed was finished, I called my wife over to the living room window. I put my arm around her.

“Look at those beds,” I said.

Now, they looked professional. Clean. Cared for. Like the ones at Wrightman Farm. The trees are ready for winter.

She smiled.

—

I don’t know if these trees will ever bear fruit. That’s years away, if it happens at all.

But I’m getting to know them as they are right now.

For four years, I’d walked past them without really seeing them. I planted them, built cages, and thought wanting them was enough. It wasn’t. Wanting something and being in relationship with it are completely different things.

Being in relationship with something is not passive. It’s learning what it needs and when it needs it. It’s showing up consistently, through the seasons that ask more of you and through the moments when nothing seems to be happening. Real relationship requires attuning to signals you might have missed before and noticing what’s struggling, what’s dormant, and what’s ready. You meet it as it actually is, not as you wish it would be.

For me, that has meant soil tests and reports. New stakes driven deep into rocky ground. Trunk guards against predators. Mulch and lime spread in November. Pruning in the winter. Nitrogen in the early spring. Checking in every season, not when it’s convenient, but when they actually need it.

The previous version of me cut corners—used cheap materials, did the minimum, and called it done. But when you’re actually in relationship with something, that’s not an option. Those rotting wooden stakes I pulled out of the ground? I replaced them with steel stakes that won’t rot. I took the time to understand what they actually needed, and finished the job properly. I cared.

My world expanded once I started paying attention. The land. The weather. The seasons. The birds preparing for winter alongside me. The chemistry of the soil. The predators I need to protect against. I entered into relationship with something beyond myself, and everything else came into focus.

I expanded too. I stepped into the weekend not knowing what I was doing. Now I’m the guy who knows what the trees need before winter, who stays up late learning about pruning schedules, who is beginning to understand soil chemistry and seasonal rhythms. That version of me didn’t exist four years ago.

When we tend something long enough, we transform in unexpected ways.

We all have our version of these apple trees. We’re surrounded by things asking to be tended. A creative practice you walked away from. An old friendship that’s been drifting. Your body that you’ve stopped listening to. The finances you keep avoiding. A skill you wanted to learn. The land around your home. A project you started with energy. A dream you’ve been sitting on. A commitment you haven’t kept.

That original impulse—the one that drew you to it in the first place—came from somewhere intelligent. It wasn’t random. A part of you recognized something worth your attention. Something that could grow if you tended it.

What in your life is calling for your attention? What is asking you to come into relationship with it?