Leafed out! What are you doing, little pomegranate tree?! I brought you inside to shelter you from the polar vortex gusting into your new garden home—but you’ve mistaken what I consider to be a drafty, north-faced living room for a cool spring invitation to burst with life. O dear! Now added to my seemingly eternal list of action items is hauling you back outside on warmish days, returning you inside for these arctic-infused nights. Back and forth, back and forth in an over and over again insanity: Who does this? What we crazy land-forming-and-filling people won’t do for the hope and delight of growing our own, a joy too hard to contain rationally in the face of turncoat weather. Overflowing displays of the brilliant red fruits in the supermarkets this winter captivated me; that Punica granatum is hardy in my area and drought tolerant were facts that like a wheelbarrow hauled me to the nursery in happy haste.
So here I am, caution blown back at me by the northern wind as I move this plant back and forth, in and out. Why don’t you leave it in the garage? my husband wonders matter-of-factly. For all my grumbling, I love to see the budding branches, to live with this evidence of God’s forever blessing right here in our house.
“‘From this day on I will bless you.’” Haggai 2:19 NIV
The Song of Songs lover went down to the grove to see if the pomegranate trees were in bloom (Song of Songs 6:11); for now, I need only go to the living room.
Read more about pomegranates in the NIV God’s Word for Gardeners Bible, page 1056
Learn more about planting pomegranates in the Plant Guide
Photo Credit: Budding branches warm a winter ©2014 Shelley S. Cramm
