CAN YOU ADAM AND EVE IT?

I've been an idiot.
I threw away all the bullace stones. If I'd thought about it, I'd have kept them and planted.
But then again, is it just greedy?
I surely have been greedy in my restocking of the orchard. Ten odd years ago, when we came here, there were a couple of ancient plum trees, a couple more tatty and useless old culinary pear varieties, and a pair of Bramleys. It was the fruit tree equivalent of a sad Old People's home. Fruit trees only last seventy or eighty years, as a rule. Those here were well into retirement, apparently nearing the end. There they sat, nodding in the slightest breeze.
One met its end. A large pear, it fell in a westerly gale. It slewed the tree, with the debris spreading like an aircraft crash, south by east. If the wind had had a touch more south in it, the tree would have crashed through the southwest corner of the house, doing God knows what damage. When we inspected it, the tree was old, and rotten to its core. The inner wood was orange dust. Brittle, like the bones of an old person.
One of the Bramleys came down too. The story there has a different ending. The fallen tree, also apparently rotten, began shooting upward new boughs in a phototropic bid for life. Feeling sorry for the old lady, I selected the strongest looking bough, and cut back hard on all the others. Now it's eight or nine feet high, and very productive. Its roots are dubious, and the inner juices of the tree must run up from the ground through the old fallen trunk, big enough, old enough and mossy enough to sit a courting couple on it. It's really still an old, fallen tree, with one new limb which happens to point upwards. But now, the issue is stopping it. It is again so fecund. I need a ladder to cut it back and stop it interfering with the overhead electricity cable, which it threatens every couple of years.
To these few, I've added and added in a wanton combination of tree - pride, tree - gluttony and, most likely, more of the seven deadly tree- sins.
Plums, damsons, gages, eating apples, cherries, and even two mulberries as a kind of mad experiment, have filled the orchard. Only a walnut failed. Too much competition, I later discovered. And still I don't stop. Come an R in the month, and my mind runs feverishly to assess if there is any space for yet more. The Missus is mystified. It isn't as though we need the fruit. On the contrary, we're inundated. I bring back another young tree, or trees, for planting. She casts her eyes heavenwards.
A sensible family tree-fruit planting goes like this. One plum. One cooking apple (preferably dwarf or semi dwarf variety). One eating apple. At a stretch, two. Pears, nil. You'll never eat them. Cherries, forget it - the birds eat them all. More exoticism than that is not required. Anything more is just greedy.
And yet, and yet. Despite our gluts, there is endless pleasure in just having a various and copious orchard. Come May, its blossom is unspeakably beautiful. Its growth throughout the year is endlessly fascinating. In summer, it gives cool, shade, and places to hang a hammock. And right now all the fruit gives scope for tremendous artistry and experimentation.
I pause. I think about planting even more, If one is going to sin, an orchard is the original place to be tempted.