Looking out: The story of the fruit tree

Well, I'm doing my latest new thing now: growing a sequoia, a redwood ... Is it possible to defy geography and grow this tree here? — Lee May. Lee May, who writes the gardening page for the Atlanta Journal, wonders whether a tree that is native to another region of the US will survive in Georgia. A friend visited California and brought him back a sequoia burl. Some of California's magnificent sequoia trees are thousands of years old. They often grow taller than 112 metres. Some have trunks wider than a small two-car garage. After reading May's article I was reminded of the photograph of a majestic redwood/sequoia in a school magazine, more than 44 years ago. I was eight years old. I remember being handed a five centimetre-wide glazing knife, and assigned the job of scraping the floor of a chicken coop near our house. Despite not being in use for several years, the hardened chicken droppings still had the power to assail my nostrils. It was strong stuff! It took me three days to scrape that floor. As reward for a job well done, I was given a fat juicy peach. It, along with a basket of others, had been allowed to ripen in a cool corner of our tool shed. It was the best peach I ever tasted. I saved that stringy pit. With the glazing knife, and my hands, I dug a hole in the front yard of our house. I got a double handful of chicken droppings to mix with the rich black dirt, planted the pit and covered it with the earthen droppings. No one had told me that peach trees did not fare well in mid-West climates. I was sad because a year of sun, rains and shade went by and nothing rose from that well-tended hole. The following year we were subjected to severe flooding. For more than a week the Red Cross brought us food and drinking water by motor boat. Our house was on the lowest ground: due to many previous floods the seasonal erosion of surface soil, on our property, was extreme. When the high water receded, I noticed my tree had a 10 centimetre sprout on it. At last, I was the grower of a fruit tree. The next year it grew as high as my thigh. Some of the limbs even dared to produce colourful blooms, but of course no fruit. To make a long story short, things were not good so I left home at 12. I returned for a short visit at the age of 14. By then the tree had grown as tall as my shoulder. For the first time, it bore fruit — if you could call them that. They were the size of golf balls and at least twice as hard. There were three of them. The next time I saw that tree I was 21, and had just left the military. It was at least 1.8 metres tall, leafy and laden with fruit. It was like being in the presence of an old friend. The fruit were the size of billiard balls. I picked one, and kept it in the glove compartment of my car for a week — nothing like it to ripen a peach! It was not especially sweet, but for a moment it gave me sweet memories. Those two peaches marked significant times in my life. So, in answer May's question, if a Georgia peach can grow into a fruit bearing-tree 48 kilometres south of downtown Chicago, I have no doubt that a California sequoia can grow strong and tall in the red clay of Georgia. I would like to suggest that he put a load of chicken droppings into the hole he seats it in. Like I said, it is very powerful stuff.

[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]