Keichee’s Peach Tree

Keichee’s Peach Tree circa 2018 on Tom Tom, aka the map on an undercharged iphone

It’s late Summer 2021, and we have all been practicing being in the world a little more. I thought it’d be a good time to reconnect with my community. I’ve been taking little trips to visit friends and clients and see what’s good and how they’ve been in the world. Home offices, brick and mortar adaptations, parklets… 2020 was rough, but the tough got creative, and the creative got tough!

Yerba Buena and Treasure Island master plan, CMG Landscape Architecture. Peach marks the spot.

What I want to share today is something fun about our drive into San Francisco— “Keichee’s Peach Tree.” Keichee is my childhood nickname. This love of trees predates and extends beyond woodwork and into a passion for fruit and everything wonderful that trees produce. It so happens a little peach tree in the middle of the bay is one of the few manifest successes in my running road-trip propagation experiment. So, “Keichee’s Peach Tree” it is.

Basically, that story goes like this: I drive from Oakland to San Francisco at least once a week. I make a point to save tree seeds and fruit pits, and I throw them out the window in locations that seem particularly barren. Three years ago, I threw a peach pit out of the window and onto a small bit of dirt right before the tunnel at Yerba Buena Island from the leftmost West-bound lane. I was surprised and delighted to see it spring up and grow, going on to survive several seasons, both wet and dry. Over time, my wife and I have both tried to capture progress photos from moving vehicles, but it hasn't proven easy.

We have a lot of blurry photos and video of this little tree over the last three and a half years. Unlike most people traversing the bridge, we look forward to the rare instances when traffic slows significantly before the tunnel. Whether we slow or not, we have come to love the sight of the little tree and marvel at the resilience of a fruit tree in the most haphazard of conditions, sprung from a pit with no tending. We crossed our fingers when heavy rain made the shallow soil soggy, and the little tree pitched sideways. Now we hope the drought will spare it.

The tree in spring. We weren’t sure what we were looking at.

For the first time this spring, we saw what appeared to be fruit forming. We hardly believed it could be true since the blossoms this spring were spare and short-lived. But, there it was! Green in April and growing larger and redder over time.

Last week, in one of the rare moments where traffic slowed enough for a safe and not-too blurry photograph of the tree, my wife got a shot that revealed at least eight pieces of ripe fruit. This renewed desire to access the oddly-placed beauty hit fever pitch over the weekend. We had done some scoping in spring, and it appeared there was a way to get to the tree safely, albeit with a questionable trip through some new construction.

So on Sunday, we made a pit-stop (get it?) on an S.F. visit and get a little closer to this scrappy little tree. I wish I could tell you we got to the fruit. We enjoyed seeing the historic Nimitz House (and its mysterious little orchard), and the swoops and turns of the new bridge and construction. Unfortunately, after traversing the construction site and entering the (barricaded from traffic) shoulder, we encountered a big blackberry thicket that represented a real impasse. We also got a little spooked about the possibility of alarming one of the motorists whizzing by. Perhaps we’ll come back with orange vests, pruning sheers and a bucket for the blackberries.

Check it out next time you’re heading West. The fruit is tasty, I can tell. Enjoy, squirrels.