This year Christmas Eve is quiet. Earlier in the day I delivered some goodies to ward members. Since our ward consists of four square blocks, I walked. It was a crisp winter day and the exercise was invigorating. Part of the evening has been occupied in creating this post.
One of my Christmas traditions is creating a poem and matching it with a photo as a Christmas greeting to family and friends. This year I wanted to write about the pear tree in my front yard.
When I moved into this house in February, I noticed the trees in the yard–couldn’t miss them. They are tall and right in front. One of the trees is a walnut–the other I couldn’t tell. There were blossoms on it when spring came.In late October/early November I discovered it was a pear tree–a really big pear tree!
The house is built of adobe and is around a hundred years old. So, I thought, a pear tree–a mammoth pear tree that must be close to one hundred years old as well. When the pears began falling to the ground, I began picking them up, thinking there would be maybe a bowlful. The bowlful turned into about eight or nine plastic grocery bags full.
“What can I do with all these pears?” I asked myself. They were too small to can whole. Into my mind came the idea to make pear butter. I did that and still had pears.
So I made pear leather–and still had pears. I shared with a neighbor, and still had pears. The last of the pears ended up as pearsauce. A few went into a pear upside-down cake.
The pear butter became one of the gifts I gave to friends for Christmas, along with this poem–an ode, of sorts, to the pear tree. As I began writing I was also thinking of the partridge in the pear tree and the religious symbolism of the tree of life.
Here is the Pear Tree Christmas poem and photo:
