My Dad was a gardener. Even though the rest of his family,
his dad and his brothers, all worked on the railways Dad didn’t want to be an
engine driver. He had green fingers and went to work on the land as soon as he
left school. He was apprenticed to a market
gardener and grew vegetables for sale on the market.
Even after war was declared he refused to go into the
reserved occupation his family had and went off to join the navy. He never really left the service, because he
worked as a civilian with the RN after he was demobbed. But he never stopped being a gardener.
I used to watch him all year round, tending his plants and
harvesting his vegetables and, though I never inherited the green fingers – if
I even look at a pot plant it wilts – I did learn one thing. Life can be tough. In order to get the best out of a plant you
must often be cruel to it.
Tomatoes won’t set if you leave the side shoots on. You have
to nip out the buds as soon as they appear. You even have to take off some of
the adult leaves as the fruits start to ripen or they sap the plant’s strength
and the tomatoes develop small and hard.
Roses will not flower unless you prune them. The best blooms
appear on year-old wood. Any older than that and the flowers never reach their
best, are pallid and fade quickly, dropping petals after only a few days.
Fruit trees must be lopped each year to remove the old wood
that can harbour pests and disease. Unless you take out the exhausted branches
the tree starts to fail. Year after year the crop will reduce until only a few,
wizened apples appear that are sour, like the crabs they were bred from.
And so it is with people. Or so it seems. For the harder we
are pruned the stronger we are. The more challenges we face the more
understanding we become. The tougher the task, the greater the pride when it is
finished. The sharper the pain, the deeper the ease when the pain finally
subsides.
Autumn is a time for pruning, for preparing a plant for the
winter and removing the dead and dying parts to make way for new growth. It’s Samhain, the start of a new cycle of
seasons and the end of the old. The pruning is over. With time I shall bloom
again.
