The fruit trees are blooming on our rural one acre.
Blushing peach tree blooms, alabaster plum tree flowers, and still-tight apple buds.
It doesn't matter how desperate the news,
spring in Kentucky is settling in and getting comfy.
My Youngest planted these trees a few years ago.
They're barely tended, receiving only a hard pruning now and then.
No fertilizer.
No pest control measures.
No staking or mulching.
And yet ... they bear fruit anyway.
But not the sort of fruit anyone looks forward to enjoying.
Tiny and shriveled, what survives the late-season frosts
bears the gnawing of every critter that passes through our backyard retreat.
With the rest of the world, I'm examining the fruit my life is bearing.
In impossible-to-imagine pandemic days, will I yield fruit gnawed by fear and anxiety,
frost-bitten with affliction, neglect-shriveled knobs?
I pray not.
Will you, with me, work alongside the Master Gardener to
stake what's leaning and allow the pruning of what's useless?
Are we willing to stand guard against enemies of anxiety and
despair, and instead, pour on the fertilizing energies of gratitude and generosity?
I pray so.
Together, we can bear fruit that will bring delight instead of disappointment.
Read more about spiritual fruit here.
Explore a fascinating innovation in fruit trees here.
