The protective structures I devised to shield my apple trees through the winter instead became their undoing. When the posts went down in the wind and snow, the netting took the tree trunks with them.

Five trees were leafy and alive in the fall. Five trees were lost to the storms come spring. My mother called to gently break the news. “The storm brought down a lot branches, all over. I’m afraid the apple trees didn’t make it.”

Home for a dash of hugs and housekeeping, I checked on my apple trees. It looked like utter devastation. Branches from our poplars and the noble beech lay strewn across the yard. The two large apple trees were parallel to the ground, trapped and flattened by the nets that were meant to save them. The smaller trees were entangled in their posts and netting.

I gently unwound the ties, cut loose the bindings, freed the branches. And was amazed.

While the deer have had their way with many of the buds, the trees have miraculously survived. Weakened and bent, perhaps forever lame, life is there. If I can manage to protect the trees from the sweet tooth of our four-legged vagrants over the next few months, the trees may just have a chance.

And we may have apples again come Rosh Hashanah. If not this year, perhaps the next.

If years and years from now, a grandchild clambers onto a thick, low-hanging branch heavy with fruit on an oddly shaped tree with a perfectly shaped nook for nestling and reading, I will remember this winter, how the wrong protection is no protection at all, how good intentions are sometimes badly turned, and how adversity can give us the most surprising gifts of all.