Surprised by Pruning

You ramble when your mind is all over the place. But then nature and creation can help you move from diffuse, unfocused thinking to focused thought. Garden gazing helped me in this shift. Here are three thoughts on life from a recent garden gazing.

Relationships

We have a small tree or shrub (or a community of shrubs) in our garden. It has not one but three or four plants. The one that gives stability is a large curry leaf plant - almost like a tree. Over years of being unattended, it has grown wild and all over the place. And climbing all over it are three or four other plants. One is a jasmine plant, which is almost like a snake creeping over the curry leaf plant. Then there is another creeper with yellow flowers. And attached to the tree are many parasitic wild plants, including mistletoe and wild orchids.

It is interesting to observe that when there is “uncontrolled growth,” many others latch on. Some as support for growth and contribution to the world (like the jasmine plant), but others only for their own growth - the parasites. Do parasitic plants have a contribution to nature? I thought no, but science says otherwise.

“Many parasitic plants enhance nutrient cycling and provide resources to other organisms like herbivores or pollinators, which contributes to facilitation cascades in ecosystems. There is also a long tradition of human use of parasitic plants for medicinal and cultural purposes worldwide.” https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiaa069

I suppose this is like a multiethnic, social, or economic community: the strong ones, the weak contributors to overall good, and then the parasitic ones, whom we feel do not contribute - or rather are a drain on the system. We prefer a mono-community of strong ones (maybe a few weak ones for us to contribute to). But it is the multi and not the mono that gives colour, growth, and fulfilment.

Resilience

It is interesting to note that in a garden it is the “weeds” or the “unwanted” that have the most resilience. I wonder why. We paved our garden with stones after destroying all the weeds and grass. Within a week, the grass was back, pushing between the crevices. I wonder why they have more resilience than the plants we carefully plant in the garden. Remember the parasites of the above section?

It is like Darwin proposed - survival of the fittest. Since they are always under attack, do they develop the ability to survive against all odds? Or is it because the Creator saw that they would be destroyed and gave them more tenacity? (Do not worry, I have not become an evolutionist 😊. I need more faith to believe in the theory of natural selection and evolution than in a theistic hand behind nature and creation.)

But the fact is—the weeds, parasites, and the unwanted have an innate ability to survive against all odds. Which brings up an interesting lesson: the more you are unwanted, rejected, and trampled upon, the more you have the potential to bounce back. Even those whom we label as parasites on the system can teach us much about life and resilience.

Renewal

Amid all this, my wise wife has been telling me - let us cut down these plants. I resisted, due to emotional attachment, though I gave the reason that one does not cut down trees - climate change. And one day she had her way. Everything was cut - but not fully. It was a hard pruning. I resisted cutting, but what she meant was pruning. A few days later, we are now seeing signs of new growth.

You prune when growth is uncontrolled. You prune when you want more fruits and flowers, or more contribution to the world. You prune to make it more pleasing to the eye. Controlled, focused contribution comes by being pruned.

But then I prefer uncontrolled, unpruned, unlimited growth. There is no pain.

But then, as Adam McHugh says, “Sometimes the old parts of your life, even when they were good and essential in a past season, can become a hindrance to new growth. They must be removed to give space for the new version of yourself to flourish. Pruning will make the fruit of the next season that much sweeter, the wines of the new vintage deeper and richer. Death makes a way for life.”

As we pruned, amid the foliage we found a long twig of a rare flowering orchid, which has now been replanted. So, does uncontrolled growth and pruning have surprises for us too?

At whatever it is, I need to allow pruning of my wandering brain before the next blog! It might produce more fruit, like the Good Book says. "He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more."