of trees and change (now with pictures)

I waited and waited to post this entry as I wanted to have some pictures to go along with it.  I took said pictures and patiently (ok, not so patiently) tried various cords and configurations but, alas, the pictures will not move from my camera to my computer.  Ah well, perhaps that's for the best as the pictures are not for the faint of heart.  Enough with preambles, though.... Got the camera working!

This weekend we cut down three of our fruit trees.  It's hard for me to even write that, to put it out there to the world that I purposely led to the death of three healthy trees.  But the decision was not made lightly.  I had been mulling the idea over for some time.  Years, actually.  You see, we cut down three trees on our second level of property.  We cut two grapefruit and an orange tree.  For years we had been dealing with growing issues on our property- we just had too much shade. We put raised beds wherever we saw that there might be sun for at least 4-6 hours out of the day to grow vegetables in.  But 4-6 hours is just not enough sunlight for most vegetables to thrive.    We (by which I mean Jed) spent hours climbing the orange and grapefruit trees each spring to cut off growth on the north side to try to keep a minimum of sun on our veggies below and even more hours collecting uneaten fruit that inevitably dropped to the ground and rotted.  We contemplated adding veggies to our front yard and while I'm all for the Food Not Lawns movement, we don't have a lawn in the front (or the back for that matter) and I am too in love with the natives garden we are slowly but surely creating in our front yard to dig it up and start over.  I thought hard about water usage, accessibility, land use, hours of sunlight, what foods I wanted to grow, etc.

So, the other day, the stars aligned and I realized that three of our trees would have to go.  I saw that we weren't eating enough of the fruit, nor were we around enough to pick fruit to bring to shelters or food banks, we didn't have enough sunlight in our garden to grow anything more than kale and chard, and so the decision was made.  Within a couple hours the trees were down and land was cleared.  Another few hours later and all the ripe oranges and grapefruit were loaded into 2 cars and an SUV and hauled down to the food bank in San Marcos (all 1,057 pounds of it).  And now there is possibility.  I have ordered some drip tape for irrigation, some seeds for planting and we've found some local compost that we hope to get this weekend.  Eventually the wood will be chipped and used as a mulch for the new growing area.

But I have to admit, every day I wake up and look out any of our north facing windows, my heart still drops a little.  There was something comforting about being able to look out into the canopy of mature citrus trees and feel sheltered by the greens and oranges and yellows.  Our yard is more of a wide open space now (granted, we still have 15 other fruit trees) but, while I'm so excited about the possibilities of gardening with sun again, I'm still feeling the loss of those trees.

I love when seemingly small actions become huge metaphors for the way I live my life.  In this case, the loss of these trees (particularly a loss that I intentionally caused) reminds me how difficult it is for me to deal with change.  I like things to stay the same, I enjoy the comfort of the familiar.  Yet, as time has gone on, I'd like to believe I've gotten better at determining those things that would be best left as they are and those things that might need to change.  I doubt I will ever really stop wondering if I made the right decision- I will always wonder if I should have just found some sunny spots and planted seeds where they were, spent more time collecting the uneaten fruit and shuttling it around town to those who are hungry, and on and on- but at this point none of those options were realistic.  My desire to feed my family from my garden is realistic, but only if I had a sunny area large enough, and now I do.  So, I feel that soft spot in my heart when I look down into our yard, but I can see it being transformed into something new.  The possibility of a working vegetable garden and the hundreds of pounds of food we can grow, eat, preserve, share...the hope of something even more amazing.  It will just take time, and patience, and lots of sun.

There's the passage from Ecclesiastes that was turned into a song.. .a time for everything, a season for everything, and all that.  I'm not going to quote that again.  But shortly after that passage, it is written "I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and do good while they live.  That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil- this is the gift of God." Ecc 3: 12-13.

And perhaps that's the point of this all...that I'll always be making decisions, some easy and some hard.  But I hope that I 'do good' and work to remember that to 'find satisfaction in all [my] toil- this is the gift of God."