Anytime I spend time in my small New England garden at the end of the day I feel like I’ve had incredible “head space” and time to talk to God. No media, no music, no interruptions. After seven days of rain, drizzle and overcast skies the time for weeding was urgent and so, I got my garden tools out, pulled on those garden gloves and got to the task at hand which in my case was pulling out weeds that had grown into small trees. I have a lot of weeds that are working on their second year because last year’s poison ivy fiasco meant I had lost all desire to garden. Honestly I was a bit nervous to get going and feared getting another summer case of the stuff but it’s a little too early for poison ivy which hopefully will never show it’s ugly potent leaves in my yard again. There is one redeeming factor we can attribute to Round Up which is it kills poison ivy among everything else in it’s path.
Today I am sore and feel the long day of weed/tree pulling and yet I’ve only accomplished about half of what I wanted to. Digging out a couple of ugly shrubs that weren’t doing much for me and shoveling out extensive fern roots, stubborn maple shoots required every muscle I had in my body to uproot. At one point I was struggling with probably the 5th maple tree that had grown into a small tree right in the middle of another shrub root system when I thought the only way to really get rid of the maple tree weed problem would be to cut the big maple tree in my front yard. When do I justify that end? Should we cut a gorgeous hundred year old maple tree down when it provides shade, turns brilliant orange in the fall and measures your children’s growth with every first day of school?
When I first moved to Massachusetts from New York City my first few days in my garden it was clear I was not a master gardener. I had managed to grow some basil on the fire escape and kept a potted tree alive in my apartment but now that we lived in a house with dirt I was intimidated by my surrounding garden aficionados on the street.
I asked a neighbor, “How can you tell what is a weed vs. what is a plant?”
My 90 year old neighbor replied in her wisdom, “a weed is a plant that is growing in a place you don’t want it to.”.
Obviously the previous inhabitants of my home loved ferns because my garden is prolific with them. Maple seedlings or “helicopters” at some point start dropping and I will say maple trees really can grow anywhere as we know in New England. The maple is part of New England’s great beauty and sustainable industry in the production of maple syrup. We need maple trees. We love maple trees. However, if you don’t pull the weedy little things out of your garden they eventually will take over and you will have a tree on it’s way to being near impossible to remove. All the maple seedlings come from the ever loved large maple tree in my front yard which is the only maple in the near vicinity. It’s not the healthiest tree sadly and after bi annually pruning it I know there will be a day that it probably will have to be cut down. The tree is also one reason we disqualify for solar panels on our home…we’ve been asked if we would consider cutting it down. Imagine that…chop down an oxygen producing maple tree down to put ugly solar panels on our cute little cape. I don’t think so!
Once a neighbor was having a tree cut down and my husband asked the tree service if they would cut the maple tree down at a discounted price. I ran out of the house and just as the guy said he was going to cut it down and I put a stop to it. I’m glad I was home at the time. While we don’t have a lot of sun for a veggie garden or fruit trees I often enjoy the shade of this maple tree and see that squirrels and birds also enjoy it too. I know that someday we’ll have to cut the mighty maple down, maybe we won’t be here when it happens. Despite the seedlings that it produces the maple goes unappreciated perhaps because it’s always been here or maybe because it’s easy to take for granted all the years it took to grow to it’s mighty height. I live on a street that has a maple canopy and they each maple tree is slowly dying off because they were planted too close to the road, salt from the harsh winters and the root systems are stressed because they actually strangle themselves when they meet the pavement of the street. This maple is tucked far enough away from the road that it’s remained healthier than others and it also is that main feature of our front yard.
While digging out yet another maple tree, God brought to my attention that when you cut a tree down you might not have issues with the weeds however look what you loose when the ancient tree is lost. It’s natural beauty and benefits far outweigh the day’s work of weeding.The cool shade that it’s shadow casts over our roof provide relief from hot humid days and a place for the critters to live. Until the maple is not longer healthy enough to sustain itself it will stay exactly planted in the same spot in which it was planted probably 50 plus years ago. Some maple trees have been around when Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson wrote their poetry. They are witnesses to the past.
While taking a break from my labor as I sat under the shade of that Mighty Maple, God pressed upon me that the Church must be like a maple tree. Strong and able to grow just about anywhere, but not turning back on it’s own when it doesn’t work out the way we often wish it to. Sometimes it needs to be uprooted in areas where there is pride and corruption. Sometimes it needs to be challenged where there is complacency. When being uprooted assuming no fault or error is not a healthy, but it should move us to deep inner searching, prayer and repentance, to be open to reproof, rebuke and sometimes even removal and replanting where maple trees don’t exist. In the end, the Master tree still stands. The Church needs to recognize the Master tree that it comes from. In a world that seems to be flying off it’s rocker with an intensity towards insanity, I pray we can recognize where we are to get our nutrients to be healthy from. God’s Word and His Word alone. Not from the pundits or newspapers, nor the podcasts or the paid pied pipers. I myself sometimes find my natural inclination is to take queues from these outputs but it only takes a day in my garden to correct my orientation to gaze once again, the Master Gardner’s ways. If I ever find myself to be uprooted, I trust by His own hands he will replant me in fertile soil.
The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree, He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.– Pslam 92:12
Lucy in Grace 