We have two fruit trees in our back garden, a plum and a pear tree. Both have produced an abundant crop this year (2017), a crop unlike any of the other 8-10 years they have been planted.
The fruit of the plum tree is super abundant. It is hard to imagine how such a small tree can produce so many plums. There must be at least a thousand plums on the tree.
Over the last few Sundays we have brought a lot of the plums to the church we attend where they were eagerly devoured in a matter of minutes. Olive also made a couple of plum tarts for the family which we all enjoyed. During the weeks of the harvest I have been eating a couple of plums a day, the rest of the family have been eating some as well.
However a lot of the fruit is not as sweet as we would like it to be. It’s quality is not great and we seem to remember that in other years the fruit tasted better even though there was much less of it.
During the months leading up to the harvest we neglected the tree. One day when I did get out to look at it late in the season before the fruit was ripe, I noticed that the tree was utterly infested with greenfly. The leaves were curling and some branches had grown with no fruit but totally covered with greenfly. I took away the worst infested of these. This action seemed to improve the situation later.
Nevertheless the fruit kept coming. In the end a lot of it fell off the tree and was inedible as soon as it was on the ground for any length of time. Slugs and other less visible insects quickly spoil the fruit. Some of it shriveled on the tree and never fully ripened, others were attacked by wasps and spiders while still on the tree.
At various stages I was torn as to whether to harvest the plums off the tree or not. We didn’t seem to get enough sun and the plums didn’t seem ready to fall off the tree.
I imagine this is a spiritual picture of what can happen if we neglect the spiritual fruit of our lives or allow sin to take over. The results can be mixed. Much of the fruit is good and useful but a lot is lost through neglect, disease and demon interference.
The pear tree has also produced a lot of fruit. There must have been about 100 pears.
In contrast with the plums this fruit is almost perfect. We have lost a couple to windfall but on the whole we have been very successful in harvesting and using them.
We brought some to the church, made cakes out of others and I and the family have been having one each per day for the last few weeks. The cakes didn’t last long.
Fruit is a seasonal phenomenon. Based on how little or how much attention we pay during the earlier parts of the year, and on the weather, next autumn there could be more or there might be very little fruit on the trees. Professional fruit growers seem to know how to produce a large, high quality fruit harvest on trees year after year though I think even they are at the mercy of the weather. It takes God’s favour, and a farmer’s skill, nurturing and time to create a consistently abundant, high quality harvest.
How is your fruit?
faithfulwon 