Every April I am beset1 by（困扰） the same concern-that spring might not occur this year. The landscape looks forsaken2（被抛弃的） , with hills, sky and forest forming a single gray meld, like the wash an artist paints on a canvas（帆布） before the masterwork. My spirits ebb3, as they did during an April snowfall when I first came to Maine 15 years ago. Just wait, a neithbor counseled. You'll wake up one morning and spring will just be here.
Andlo, on May 3 that year I awoke to a green so startling as to be almost electric, as if spring were simply a matter of flipping4 a switch. Hills, sky and forest revealed their purples, blues5 and green. Leaves had unfurled（展开） , goldfinches had arrived at the feeder and daffodils（水仙花） were fighting their way heavenward.
Then there was the old apple tree. It sits on an undeveloped lot in my neighborhood. It belongs to no one and therefore to everyone. The tree's dark twisted branches sprawl6 in unpruned abandon. Each spring it blossoms so profusely8 that the air becomes saturated9 with the aroma10 of apple. When I drive by with my windows rolled down, it gives me the feeling of moving in another element, like a kid on a water slide.
Until last year, I thought I was the only one aware of this tree. And then one day, in a fit of spring madness, I set out with pruner11 and lopper to remove a few errant branches. No sooner had I arrived under its boughs12 than neighbors opened their windows and stepped onto their porches. These were people I barely knew and seldom spoke13 to, but it was as if I had come unbidden（未受邀请的） into their personal gardens.
My mobile-home neighbor was the first to speak.You're not cutting it down, are you? Another neighbor winced14 as I lopped off（砍掉） a branch. Don't kill it, now, he cautioned. Soon half the neighborhood had joined me under the apple arbor15. It struck me that I had lived there for five years and only now was learning these people's names, what they did for a living and how they passed the winter. It was as if the old apple tree gathering16 us under its boughs for the dual17 purpose of acquaintanceship and shared wonder. I couldn't help recalling Robert Frost's* words:
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods
One thaw18 led to another. Just the other day I saw one of my neighbors at the local store. He remarked how this recent winter had been especially long and lamented19（悼念） not having seen or spoken at length to anyone in our neighborhood. And then, recouping his thoughts, he looked at me and said, We need to prune7（修剪） that apple tree again.
