I Apologized to the Apples

Up in the Pacific Northwest, the natural world is waking up from the long, dark winter. I suppose the humans are too. My garden and I are no exception. Each day of sunshine has been an opportunity to be outside, clearing away the refuse of winter storms, removing spent twigs and blotted leaves, and pruning back the more overeager garden residents (I’m talking to you, Wisteria). The sweetest part of spring in the garden is the fresh growth. The thousand little affirmations of life and resilience in the form of delicate blossoms, emerging buds, and crisp, green sprouts.

The sweetest part of spring in the garden is the fresh growth.

In Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird she says that a garden is one of the great metaphors for humanity. This gardener agrees. Year after year the insight about gardening and life may vary, but it is always there. This season, as I am tending to my backyard garden, I am also tending to my creative one. And in my garden, and my creative life, I am focused on thinning. Yep, I’m going all in on the metaphor.

Thinning is not pruning. Pruning feels good - in gardening and in life. Pruning is getting rid of the dead, the diseased, and the destructive. Thinning is sad. Thinning is when a gardener must go through and remove some of what is fresh and green and just getting started so that what remains has space to grow. When I first learned about thinning, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Patches of my backyard garden are still recovering from my unwillingness to do the hard job, make the hard choices.  

For plants to grow, be healthy, and reach their full potential, they need space. Enough space to sink deep roots that can survive drought, space to have fresh air flow between their branches, and, importantly, space for sunlight. A crowded plant is a choked plant. One that can’t reach its full potential. One that is unlikely to bear good fruit.

If this isn’t a metaphor for how I’ve lived my life, I don’t know what is. For decades, I have packed every fertile square inch of my time and energy with something. An idea, a plan, a commitment, a project. Since leaving my corporate job, all of my time and energy are self-directed for the first time since I can remember but no less packed. I am constantly seeding fresh ideas and sprouting new projects. Before long I find myself overwhelmed and claustrophobic…again.

Fortunately, I’ve learned this lesson in my garden, I’m learning it in my life, and this spring I am applying it to my creative pursuits. Quickly, my creative projects have stacked up, every square inch of space nurturing some little sprig of potential. An idea, a plan, a project. It is time to thin. Thinning will be sad. But I can’t wait to see what will happen with a little space to breathe.  

I can’t wait to see what will happen with a little space to breathe.  

As I go project by project, idea by idea, and make the hard decisions, I am thinking about my first apple harvest. Last year, my Honeycrisp trees sprouted their first apples. It was a harvest three years in the making as fruit trees need time to establish before they begin to produce. Seeing those branches bursting with clusters of pinkie-sized apples was a feeling beyond joy. Then I found out that I would need to thin. I would need to pluck out most of those little apples so that a comparative few could reach their full potential. Refusing to thin would lead to a damaged tree and small, bitter apples. As I moved cluster to cluster, plucking out apple after apple, I sniffed back tears. I apologized to the apples. I apologized to the trees. I cursed the monsters that bred these apples to be so big and grow too close together. But you know what? Almost every little apple that remained made it to harvest. They grew big and shiny, blushing with pink. Each bite was crisp, fresh, and sweet. Everything a Honeycrisp apple is meant to be.