God has always taught in parable form
Tuesday August 10th 2021, 8:40 pm
Filed under: Garden

39.5″ at six months old this week, more if it were straight up.

So I had it all protected like that where the cottontail couldn’t chew on it, but I mentioned the mockingbird that walked in at a gap between the ground and the cover and then had a panic attack when it couldn’t free itself by flying upwards. I woke up to find it thrashing around in there.

I let it go.

But the apricot’s top trunk was now bent and for the first time it wasn’t leaning back towards the sun and straightening up by the end of the day.

I’d been giving it quarter turns multiple times a day, it had had such a perfect form. I was proud of that like a parent with a kid in middle school band who can not only actually hit the notes right but does it every time. Show off. Teacher’s pet.

A few days of its staying put–okay, lean *this* way now!–made no difference.

So I staked it. Now, a couple weeks ago we had a bit of a windstorm and I knew it was prompting the tree to thicken and strengthen its trunk and that having it sway hard like that was good for its structure, you want that knowing it’s going to be supporting hanging weight when it gets older–but this time, no. I wanted it to go back to the pattern I’d worked so hard at creating.

Nature laughed again.

Actually, it did help a little bit.

Today I took off the soft strand of white aran merino and the pencil-thin pole it was tied to to see what the newest leaves at the top would do.

It doesn’t really matter; wherever it gets up to at the end of the season will be pruned off during the winter to allow the sun into the center, to teach light and sweetness to all the apricots to come wherever they may be, not just the privileged ones growing furthest outward. The fruit holding on closest to the strength of the trunk will taste wonderful, too: it just needs to be out of the shadows. Let me set it up right for them, too.

And to keep the tree’s height within reach rather than just telling future longing eyes, oh no, honey, that’s beyond the likes of you.

And then there’s the Anya’s little seed-sister trying to run as fast as the big kid and wanting you to know it’s grown an inch and a quarter since the last time it was measured and just you wait till next year when its growing tips are new and alive! It’s going to grow up big and strong!


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Sometimes it just hits me how all these amazing plants start with a little bitty seed, like wow! Look at them grow.

Comment by ccr in MA 08.11.21 @ 6:23 am



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