Rent-a-Tree

"Comfort me with apples," adjured Solomon, not foreseeing the day when they would cost 25-c- apiece at the supermarket. To put some of the comfort back into apple consumption, two young California entrepreneurs are providing a rent-a-tree service that allows city dwellers to raise all the fruit they can possibly eat and also enjoy the pristine pleasures of watching trees grow, blossom and yield.

At Buena Vista, their 13-acre orchard in the lush, apple-growing Russian River country 60 miles north of San Francisco, Attorney Jerry Abbott, 36, and Michael Martin, 35, a social worker, are leasing trees for between $25 and $150 a year, according to size. Renters of the smaller trees are guaranteed a yield of two boxes of prized Gravenstein apples, while those who reserve the big, older trees will be able to pick as much as a ton of apples.

Customers can choose from among 1,000 trees, including some cherries, and receive redwood plaques with their names on them to hang on their rented trunks. They have full sitting, picking, picnicking and climbing rights, but are spared all the tiresome chores of spraying, propping and pruning. Moreover, as a number of young Bay Area couples discovered during the local apple blossom festival last April, there can be more to sitting under an apple tree than discovering the law of gravity.

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