Samhain

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.