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Every April I ambeset by（困扰）the same concern-that spring might not occur this year. The landscape looksforsaken（被抛弃的）, with hills, sky and forest forming a single gray meld, like the wash an artist paints on acanvas（帆布）before the masterwork. My spirits ebb, 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 flipping a switch. Hills, sky and forest revealed their purples, blues and green. Leaves hadunfurled（展开）, goldfinches had arrived at the feeder anddaffodils（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 sprawl in unpruned abandon. Each spring it blossoms so profusely that the air becomes saturated with the aroma 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 pruner and lopper to remove a few errant branches. No sooner had I arrived under its boughs than neighbors opened their windows and stepped onto their porches. These were people I barely knew and seldom spoke to, but it was as if I had comeunbidden（未受邀请的）into their personal gardens. | 
