We all need somebody to lean on
This is the time of year when the fruit trees grow legs.
They become spidery beings, some of them. Their branches, burdened with too much fruit to bear, risk breaking unless some human comes along and props them with a forked stake. They look like they’ve taken to walking very slowly with spindly legs across the land. Some, with only one branch bending downward under the weight of their developing fruit, become like human people standing proudly upright with the aid of a cane.
This culture makes us so determined to do more, make more, get more, provide more, produce more, that even the trees we breed don’t know when enough is enough. If human gardeners didn’t come through and thin the fruit, hardly any would ripen. If human gardeners didn’t prop up branches endangered by our love of excess, they would break and be lost, fruit and all. Each tree is expected to return on the orchardist’s investment every year, to produce harvests so great no family could appreciate the abundance. What’s amazing is that so many of them manage it.
Apple and pear trees planted here a hundred years ago still stand, and some still give fruit. In places their forks are cleft, as if the trees were rent apart by the burden of their own selflessly-bearing branches.
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Tags: enough, gardening, philosophy, resilience
