Pruning

It was a beautiful day yesterday.  I spent much of it outdoors.  Pruning and trimming branches.  By the end of the day, I was exhausted.

 

But, It was worth it.  Things look better, they will grow better.  They will become what they were supposed to become.

 

In the middle of cutting off one particularly large branch it occurred to me that pruning in my (and YOUR) life is essential to us becoming what we were destined to become.

 

Considering these Pruning Truths:

 

• Pruning is always traumatic for the tree being pruned. Sometimes they even bleed.  It doesn't kill them, but it is traumatic for the moment.
• Cutting off dead wood protects the tree from infection and disease.  It keeps it from being susceptible to difficult winds in life. 
• To prune properly the one pruning must have an image of what he wants the tree being pruned to look like when it's done.
• Some plants (like grapes and wisteria) won't bloom or bear fruit without pruning.  They will just grow randomly and become fruitless.
• The branches cut off are only good for the burn pile.  Pining over lost branches is a waste of time and energy.
• The best pruning  leaves nothing of the branch pruned as a reminder.
• Some pruning takes place pretty close to the trunk.  Seems dangerous but the best thing to do.
• Sometimes a pruning is best accomplished (like on a dogwood shrub) but cutting everything off to the trunk.  It will look dead, but when it comes back it will grow with twice the vigor and beauty it had before.
• That branch that grows out of proportion with the rest of the plant must be pruned or it will eventually kill or damage the plant.  Balance is essential in look and in growth.
• The ultimate prune for every plant is death.  Every tree, not matter what, dies.  The space it used to occupy will become the growth for new life that will follow.

 

How much the husbandry of trees and shrubs is like life.

 

Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches.