Our Lord never condemned the fig tree because it brought forth so much fruit that some fell to the ground and spoiled. He only cursed it when it was barren.
Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.
You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree's fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down - bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.
Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don't see what goes on underground - as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don't see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.
I planted an orchard when I was 13. The impulse came from wanting to grow my own apples. That and the nursery catalog showed an apple tree with a beautiful girl standing under the fruit. Whether the flavor or the picture that did it, I've been hooked since.
I have two young children, and they both adore books. Reading together at bedtime is one of our favorite nightly rituals. 'Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site' by Sherri Duskey Rinker, 'The Giving Tree' by Shel Silverstein, and 'On The Night You Were Born' by Nancy Tillman are always on our list.
Try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, 'Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow,' and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you.
With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It's made up of pioneers, the beginners. That's where the action is.
A plump, well-fed stream is as satisfying to behold as a well-fed animal or a thrifty tree. One source of charm in the English landscape is the full, placid stream the season through; no desiccated watercourses will you see there, nor any feeble, decrepit brooks, hardly able to get over the ground.
In a pine tree behind me, an eagle waits out the rain, hunched into himself, brooding. Crows squabble, a murder chasing a raven. Seals cruise the lines of fishing nets bobbing in the water, hoping for an easy meal, the tender bellies of salmon.
I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
As the twig is bent the tree inclines.
Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
'Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.
Even as a kid, I was a businessman. I figured out that if you plucked all the berries off my neighbor's tree and smashed them up, they made a Nickelodeon Gak-type consistency. I sold them to all the neighborhood kids and made stacks of quarters. Of course, the berries were poisonous, and I got in all types of trouble.
My best friend was Aboriginal. She taught me about 'bush tucker' - the food of the land, the different things you could eat if you got lost in the bush, like grasses and berries. There's this tree called the billygoat plum - the fruit is quite nice.
The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.
The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The second-best time to plant a tree is today.
'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' by Betty Smith is one of my favorites. Even though it doesn't have any monsters or crazy fantasy in it, it's such a raw story, and I can really relate to the characters. I think it's a beautiful story.