Here I am, amid the florescence of my shad bush, or serviceberry tree (Amelanchier canadensis), which blooms annually on April 23, a date I can easily remember, because it is Shakespeare's and Nabokov's birthday. As much as I love the abstraction we call poetry, I love the tangible reality of trees: their hard bark, gnarled limbs, green leaves, and spring blossoms. On my less than quarter-acre plot in Sag Harbor, NY, I have planted five apple trees, three pears, two cherries, a plum, and an apricot. But I rarely get any unspoiled fruit, because I decline to spray the trees with the insecticides necessary to protect the fruit from codling moth and other pests, lest I kill beneficial insects as well. As for my shad, named after the small fish that run in streams at the time the tree blossoms, it was planted in 1975 by a dear friend who stayed in my house for two summers while I was abroad on a Fulbright in Czechoslovakia. Its dark red berries, the size of currants, have no pests and feed the birds that drop by my yard.