200 OLIVE TREES IN MY BACKYARD
EVA FLOERSHEIM
Just behind my house there is an olive grove.
Our own olive grove.
My husband planted it in 1982.
These olives were all originally of the Sori variety.
Unfortunately, several trees have died over the years.
Before my husband planted the olive trees, he had been growing beets for the cows on this field.
The beets brought with them a disease of some kind. Since then the disease has been lurking in the ground.
So, now and then, after many years of growing and yielding olives, yet another tree suddenly dries up.
Eventually it dies.
Therefore, my husband has added another variety for the trees that had died.
This variety is called Manzonillo.
I like to walk among these trees. Sometimes, after hanging clothes to dry in the backyard,
I walk up a row and enjoy the shapes of the olive trunks.
Each tree is an olive tree, but each olive tree is a little different.
Some are older and bigger.
Some are younger and quite small.
Each trunk has its own shape, its own texture, its own colour.
Just now, in February, I can occasionally see a black olive here and there, still on the tree.
Back in October when they had just the right shade of green,
the olives were picked to be pickled in a factory in the South.
But a few olives remained on the trees, slowly turning black.
Every year, after the season is over, we let a charming elderly couple pick the leftover olives.
Some of the green olives the man and his wife pickle in Arabic style, with no preservatives added.
Some of the black ones they put in salt.
Subsequently, each year they bring us back some of these olives to indulge in tasting.
This January my husband finally got to pruning the olive grove.
He has pruned many olive trees quite drastically
in the hope that in the future the olives would be fewer but bigger.
The profit from the olives is not impressive at all,
considering the expenses of keeping the trees in top shape,
water spraying, fertilizing, and finally the picking itself.
But there is something very special about planting and caring for an olive grove.
Olive trees can grow for hundreds of years.
In this country some are even two thousand years old.
How old will our olives eventually become?
Who will harvest the olives in fifty or hundred years time?
Or will one day our olive grove become a piece of a real estate
where houses and asphalt cover the ground?
For now, I feel the connection to the past through these olives,
and forget about the future.
I enjoy the moment.
It is one of life's simple pleasures to walk along the olive grove and watch the trees.
I marvel in the differences between each tree.
Each tree is a unique creation.
For me, it feels like an exercise in meditation.
I become calmer, more focused and return to my house with new energy.
200 olive trees right behind my house.
200 simple pleasures.
Eva Floersheim,
Israel, February 17, 2003
Photography by Eva Floersheim, 2003
Photo Copyright © Eva Floersheim, 2003
