Life is Like a Peach Tree

Forrest Gump may think that life is like a box of chocolates and I have no arguments with that (How can I argue with chocolate?). But I have a peach tree in my back yard full of tender, young peaches needing cultivation so they can become part of a fruit pie on my table. So my metaphor for life right now is motivated by my own back yard. (No, I don’t live in Kansas, but we are in a neighboring state.)

In order to fully grasp the lesson hidden in my peach tree, you need to see it first.

Do you see what I see? No, not the yellow leaves or patches of red fungus that need to be addressed. I’m talking about the fruit.

Let me show you another one to see if that helps.

Now do you see it? This tree is producing a LOT of fruit. In fact, it’s actually producing more fruit than it can handle. We lodged a brace under one limb because it looked like it might break off from the weight of the fruit.

Even with the brace, we still we have branches dragging the ground. And this is with still fairly small fruit. This must be what is meant when they say, “low hanging fruit.”

I read up about fruit trees when I moved into this house because I’d never lived in a house with fruit trees and I wanted to take good care of them. OK, I had more selfish motivations than that. Truth be told, I had visions of peach pie and jam dancing in my head.

One tip I read about in caring for fruit trees is something I’ve since referred to as selective reduction. The tree produces more fruit than it can bear. If you let this condition progress, the tree will produce lackluster fruit. To help it produce the tastiest fruit, you have to pick the smaller buds so all the tree’s energy can go toward the remaining fruit.

After reading this tip my normal worrisome nature set in motion. How would I know which fruit to remove? What if I picked off the wrong fruit? What if I picked off too many or too few?

The answer to these questions was given to me by the tree itself. It doesn’t take much time bonding with a peach tree before you know which fruit to pick. Let’s see if you can tell from the picture below.

Do you see the little, underdeveloped peach bud in the middle of the more developed peaches? That’s one I would pick off. The tree would continue trying to nurture that little peach bud at the expense of the more developed fruit around it.

So I pick those immature peach buds. And I feel bad about it. I feel like a mother bird, kicking the weakest of my chicks out of the nest.

Sorry little peach bud, but you don’t pass inspection…

Neither do you. Don’t worry, I’ll find a good purpose for you in other areas of the garden.

It was while I was purposefully picking off undesirable fruit that I came up with a life lesson. You see, just as peach trees produce more fruit than they can bear, we produce more ideas than we can bear as well. As a result we can find ourselves involved in more projects, activities, and endeavors than our life tree can bear.

Sometimes it’s necessary to do a little pruning of the less fruitful ideas in order to allow enough energy to the ones that have a good chance. This requires what feels to many of us as an almost ruthless approach, saying no.

But keep my little peach tree in mind and repeat to yourself that by saying no to some things, you are allowing other areas of your life to produce some truly divine peach cobbler. So, Forrest, life is like a box of chocolates, but it’s also like a peach tree.