“How do you do?” said the first apple blossom to a pear blossom on the next tree.
“Splendidly,” said the pear blossom. “And yourself?”
“Never better.”
When the other blossoms heard them talking, they all came out to join in — and soon the whole orchard was alive with conversation, while the Breeze Brothers blew petals off the branches in great drifts that settled on the ground like a second snowfall.
“Did your tree tell you its secret?” asked the apple blossom.
“Yes,” said the pear blossom. “I was just about to ask you the same.”
“This is ours,” said the apple blossom. “The farmhouse nearby is shabby — it’s needed painting for many years, and the family inside can’t afford it. They’ve had bad luck with the potatoes: bugs eat them before harvest. The corn gets knocked flat by storms every summer, just when it was growing well. They feel it, you know, living in a drab house while everything around them turns bright and beautiful.
“But my tree whispered to me this morning: ‘Little blossoms, be as beautiful as you can. For one season every year, make their shabby house look like it stands inside a fairyland.'”
The pear blossom was quiet for a moment.
“That is a good secret,” it said.
And so the blossoms opened — apple and pear together — and for those weeks each spring, the poor farmhouse was the most beautiful house in the valley.
