One of These Days...but in the Meantime...

It felt a bit like horticultural cruelty.  That, and flagrant, callous wastefulness. 

When the kids gave me fruit trees for my birthday shortly after we moved to the farm it was late enough in the commercial season that the nursery attendant was more interested in getting rid of inventory than dispensing guidance to an ignorant wannabe farmer.  We planted them, hoped for the best, and hunkered down for the winter, hoping they would survive.  When Lori and I brought home a few more last month -- from a different nursery -- the owner offered an extensive tutorial.  Included in the counsel was the forewarning that the trees could possibly show fruit this summer, but that we should prune it off to direct maximum nourishment to the roots.  "This year," he offered in his best Zen voice, "the roots need all the energy." 

Sure enough, springtime killing frosts notwithstanding, the trees popped with aspiring plums, pears and apricots.  I felt a first-timer's giddiness at the bounty and stopped to admire the fruitful branches every time I passed.  But the nurseryman's haunting caution breathed foreboding in every rustling breeze.  Indeed, I understand the principle.  Fruit trees -- like the asparagus I planted a couple of weeks ago and the raspberry bushes I planted today -- are long term investments.  They aren't the peas that will move from seed to supper in a matter of weeks.  Short term skimming, I know deep down, jeopardizes long term resilience and productivity.  Nevertheless it broke my heart to take the pruner in hand and do the deed.  I felt like King Herod slaughtering the innocents in Matthew's nativity story.  Or like a miscreant drowning puppies.

Helpful, then, to my conscience to come in and reread the Gospel lection for this Sunday -- Jesus' metaphor about the "true vine" in John 15 in which the vinegrower not only removes non-bearing branches but also prunes even those branches that do bear fruit to enable them to bear still more.  That characterization recalled my soul to the Oregon vineyards we visited last summer where we learned about "fruit drop" -- the process of cutting out whole grape clusters so that the remaining clusters have better access to the sun and all the vitality the vines have to offer now concentrated rather than dissipated. 

And that, of course, is the point -- to encourage the best fruit the plants have to offer.  Soil health, rain water,and pruning.  There was a time when I might have looked at those long term investments and whined, "I can't wait until next year," but not this time.  There is too much to look forward to in the meantime to want any of it hurrying by.