Pruning

A few weeks after the Christmas Cactus had bloomed the last of the flowers had faded. I was still marveling at my new found horticultural skills as I observed how huge the plant had grown. As I removed the wilted flowers it occurred to me that the plant now had to be cut back - it was way too overgrown to fit anywhere.

That's when I came to understand that the plants in the house weren't undergoing some new growth spurt due to my green thumb. All those years they'd been growing fine. All those years Robin had been caring for them, tending to them, repotting them annually, cutting them back as needed, keeping them healthy.

I took a tour of the kitchen where most of the plants reside for the Winter. There's a hanging spider plant which has multiple shoots hanging down for a total of about six feet - nearing the ground. It continually generates brown, dying leaves which I pull off; but I've never done anything to stop it from generating new hanging shoots. I guess I've reached a new level of plant care. Now I see that just continuously growing a plant larger isn’t necessarily the best for its future.

For a couple of weeks I thought for sure there was some metaphor in there about life and death. Maybe something about the human race and how we all come and go from this life. Some parts of the plant coming and going quickly, some parts lasting longer. Anyway, the idea never did quite gel.

As I sat to write about it, my feelings changed. Now I see it much more clearly as a metaphor for the human experience. Maybe we're all being pruned continuously. If so then the pain we sometimes experience shouldn't be viewed so negatively. The pruning in our lives isn't the end of growth, it's simply an opportunity to grow in new directions.