If birds of a feather flock together,
Do bats have a thing for flocking of wing?
If an apple a day keeps the doctor away,
How will those docs ever earn their pay?
Would a plum chewed in May
Make this "reform" okay?
A trip to Leon Sinks Geological Area last weekend produced some fruit for thought. I guess I must be "karst" (think Irish accent here). There has to be some limestone bedrock embedded in my brain that finally gave way. Today I worked a couple of hours at the Santa Rosa County (University of Florida) Extension Demonstration Gardens in Milton. Now that the weather has finally warmed up a little here in sunny Florida (ha!), work and joy aplenty await the willing worker who will give up some time to dig in the dirt and savor some rhyme! I worked most of the time with a veteran of the program with which I'm involved. When I arrived, she put me to work trimming some Japanese maple trees, and we talked about many things, garden-related and not. One of the things that impressed me the most about her was her willingness to let go. Let go? From our talk as we worked, I gathered that she spends a lot of time helping other people. She has been a Master Gardener for a number of years, yet she doesn't try to lord it over anyone just learning the ropes. I had a free hand to shape those trees, and I would have continued shaping them ad infinitum just for the sake of talking with her. Specific details of that conversation don't really matter. Over the course of a couple of hours, I learned--again, mind you!--that intention is key to my health and progress as a human being.
I took that picture of plum tree blossoms this morning before I drove to Milton. Last year, SAM and I planted two plum (Prunus) trees after finding healthy specimens at a local nursery. I went with the recommendations of the employee there and purchased two different cultivars of Prunus salicina for the purpose of optimizing pollination and fruit production, one of them known as "Bruce" and the other "Burbank." I wish I--and maybe the nursery owner(s)--had taken the time to be better informed and had followed certain recommendations backed by years of recent research. Maybe someday I will learn to seek, recognize, and follow the path of good intention.
We see the reverse in TREES of what we do in [RIVERS]. In these, all comes from one common stock and is distributed into innumerable branches, beginning at the root where the trunk is biggest of all, and ending in the extremities of the smallest twigs. The water here, in the sap of those trees, has a contrary course from what it has in rivers, where the course begins in the extremities of the smallest branches, and ends in the mouth of the river where the river is largest, and all the waters are collected into one body...
(from Jonathan Edwards' (1703-1758) Images or Shadows of Divine Things)
