A Lesson From An Apple Tree

When I was younger, something that used to make me really upset was when my mother would trim the apple trees.  

In a world that is too quickly urbanizing, the last thing I wanted was less tree, or to do what felt like subduing. Its natural beauty and characteristics. If it's nature, why would it we cut any of it off? Is it from your aesthetics? 

She would tell me it's good for the tree, but I really didn't understand how that could be if this was its nature. 

Many years later, I ended up working at a nursery. I learned how to take care of a variety of plants and one of my daily tasks was removing what we called the suckers off of the tomato plants. 

These suckers were typically very straight branching offs of the main stem. They grew there by itself, it didn't mean the plant was bad. However, it turns out these suckers were actually sucking out important nutrients for the plant. And if we did not take them off, the plant would not do as well, fail to produce, or even dye much sooner than it had to.

Revisiting the apple tree in the center, I found it overrun by what I now knew were called suckers. These very upward facing extra branches, that I interpreted as the trees way of doing its thing just to get more sun that if it's natural it must be good, or actually what was causing my tree to die faster. 

Today I prune probably 100 suckers off of this tree. 

In a world that is so fake, dishonest; filled what's supposed to be beautiful actually contrived, and what's supposed to be good performative righteousness, it makes a lot of sense that if someone asked us to trim parts of ourselves, we'd say no way. This is who I am. 

The suckers grew on the tree all by itself, and for the life of me I couldn't understand how just letting nature grow as it does without interference or removing anything at all, could be anything but an attack on beautiful and essential nature. 

In the past, when we would do these huge cuts of the suckers, the tree looked so empty that I cried. 

The tree kept growing, however. 

And I came to see that my mother was right all along, that not everything that glows from the tree naturally is actually good for the tree. 

When we cut off the suckers they produce more flowers, more fruit that can be propagated and feed animals and people around it, and the longer it can live and thrive. 

There might be parts of our nature that just grow that we are told in the Bible to cut off. 

If your eyes making you stumble, tear it out. If your right hand is making you stumble, cut it off.

Like a sucker, these often very straight, or at least non-conforming to the typical shape of the tree's branches, could be ways that we naturally do not conform to what is expected of us. And surrounded by the urbanization physically, and demonization morally, of our world. It is no wonder that we are afraid to cut anything off for fear of losing ourselves. 

Jehovah is not going to tell us to cut off something that isn't a sucker. 

In the past I was so conservative cutting them off, because some of suckers had gotten so big, I even saw apples growing off of them. How could this be bad? 

And they are part of my tree’s unique shape, how could I cut any part of it?

This year, however, all the suckers that I left, I see many of them are beginning to shrivel and go dead, with that death making itself up the branches towards the trunk of the tree. 

The longer you let suckers grow, the scarier it's going to be, in the more empty the tree is going to feel after. 

But removing these things is not against nature, it is a sincere, good-hearted, free will interacting with what grows to support what is beautiful, natural, honest, and can be so enduring Beyond our imagination. 

If I definitely do, the apples have become sweeter. Fewer, because so much of the tree is empty. After what I let grow. It scares me that to look at it sometimes. 

But whenever the apples grow and I see them healthier, in the next year. I see the more regularly patterned branches thrive more, I recognized that this is not the beauty of the treat being lost. All trees are still different, this does not make this tree standardized or cookie cutter. 

But it helps thrive, in spite of loss. 

My tree is old and will not live forever. Some of the suckers were there so long and thick already, I will simply be managing their offshoots for the rest of its life.

But my tree is healthier than before. It's apples much more edible again.

And this year I noticed... An unfamiliar plant growing behind it.

Its next generation has begun, and I can switch it grow sitting from the middle of our apple tree.