Thoughts while apple thinning

"For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

Yesterday's impromptu garden tour reminded me that it's past time for me to get serious about thinning the apple tree. One of the first non-citrus trees that was successful in our poorly draining, heavy clay soil is this Ein Shemer apple.tree. It always sets more fruit than its branches can bear, and this year the fruit set was particularly heavy due to the increased number of "chilling hours" it received. There are hundreds of marble-to-half-dollar size apples on the tree, and a large percentage of them need to go. So I need to go to every cluster like this and remove all the apples but one, and there are a lot of clusters!

Thinning fruit is less enjoyable than weeding. When I'm weeding, I'm generally in attack mode, feeling totally justified in ripping out the unwanted invaders by the roots. When I'm thinning fruit, I'm forced to remove something desirable, just because you really can have too many of a good thing. Plus, I'm often looking into the sun and being poked in the face by recalcitrant branches.

I thought of some people I know who try to do so many things that they become stressed and overwhelmed, like the apple tree branches that sag and break under the weight of too much fruit. The apples don't grow as large on an unthinned tree, and sometimes people who try to do too many good things wind up doing none of them well. Then there are those people who seem to never have enough in the way of things, want to hold on to everything they have while grasping for more, and wind up losing something more valuable.

Just as it's easier for me to see the faults of others rather than my own, it's easier for me to write about thinning the apple tree than to get out of my comfortable chair in front of the computer and go do it. Time to go back to work!