Later

(More Paris notes to follow... today, in the garden picking, I keep returning to these thoughts...)

Under the beating sun today, I picked no red jewels, but pinched off strawberry blooms.

I confess, it felt counter-intuitive—just plain wrong---to bend over each tender plant slip, press delicate white petals and all hopes of fleshy scarlet sweet, between thumb and index, and then pluck.

I forced myself on with the reassurance: “Pick off all first blooms to ensure subsequent harvests are more plentiful.”

If I intended for the new everbearing berry plants to produce heavily throughout the season, I had to choose to sacrifice the first harvest so that growth and energy could be invested into producing later crops.

Pick, Pinch, Pluck.

Trim. Pare it down. Cut out that which seems good, right, productive. To invest in that which is better. Best.

Early sacrifice for later bounty.

It too seems counter-intuitive to pluck off certain life activities that will yield good fruit. An observer might even think it foolish: the bloom is apparent; a good harvest seems close, inevitable.

Yet to prune off seemingly good blooms lets a life put down roots. To grow deeper, fuller. And allows later seasons to yield the longed-for abundant crop.

Heart, take heart: what today seems a sacrifice, a plucking of dreams, will someday be but a trifling. A wise investment. In the later harvest.

The sweetest one.

Abba Father? Its painful to prune out good things blooming. And hard to remember why. Hard to have faith in the harvest coming. Later. Remind me how sweet it will be. So I can have the courage to pluck today.

Originally posted 06.09.07.