Harken Yee Withered Vine

      When small green herons stand in the decorative pool outside your kitchen window and eat the coi that your daughter just brought back from her teaching stint in Japan,.or the rabbits finish off your 4th and last bing cherry tree, when you discover that your sugar maples have been nibbled into extreme unction by an anonymous white tailed deer, when your decorative plum that you just spent 40$ on and nurtured from seed is flattened by a cement truck and your front yard looks like and for "Better Weeds and Gardens", remember the following true story:

The Parable of the Thorn Tree

      It was Emmaus walk 135 at the old Huntington monastery. I was one of the more disconnected team members. I often carry a shovel with me, however, and there was a thorn tree growing out of the side of the Abbey wall. It threatened to collapse the wall and certainly was a near future target for some well meaning committee toting a can of Roundup spray. I was hoping to find a sport Concord grape vine from the abbey vineyard or one of the fragrant trees sporting chains of flowers that lived in the surrounding wood but alas, no such luck. But I did have the perfect place for a thorn tree at the end of my grape arbor. And God put it on my heart to save this tree. It would help serve as a barrier to wildlife. And some day it might make the perfect shaleli or walking stick to aid me in my old age. As a table leader at the walk I realized I probably didn't have enough time, nonetheless I carefully avoided the thorns, removed all the roots from the base of the wall and unceremoniously heaved the tree into my truck wrapped in wet newspaper along with some seed from the chain trees that I had found the previous evening. To my surprise, each year the tree became a little taller and stronger while the rest of the trees in my field that I had planted, some 5000 were either destroyed.or replaced by Eleagnus angustifolia, Russian Olive, a weed tree. But each year the thorns grew longer and the baby tree grew bigger. Then, four years later, as my wife and I drove down the driveway during a nasty July dry spell I was horrified at what I saw. The deer had pulled the bark loose all the way from the bottom to the top of the six foot tree, carefully avoiding all the thorns. Within days the tree withered and dried. The end.

........

       But next year the tree sprouted from the ground and grew 10 feet. In a few more years the same deer will seek it for shelter I thought. And the year after it grew another 5 feet and spread underground runners forming a small grove. The bark thickened so the deer could no longer attack it. But the thorns were ferocious and after some typing I found it was a a member of the black locust family and perhaps similar or the same as the fragrant flowering trees I had so admired and gathered seed from in that distant spring..

A new unforeseen beginning...

Emmaus walk 209, year 2010. I left on the walk this weekend, feeling pretty bad. My health has been a big problem and my wife has been nearly unable to fend for herself. When I returned to the house she announced she had found a renewed ability to cope with each day and I offered to gather some flowers. What I didn't expect was the most fragrant flower of all...... that small tree. And while the small chain of pea like flowers that I picked quickly wilted, God's tree stands strong and firm and flowering for the first time. Decolores