It is actually special this tree, because apple seeds are not so easy to germinate and grow as it would seem. So many apples have fallen from this tree but the chances of another growing are small. The tiny seed needs nurtured and cared for. The conditions need to be just right for it to grow.
The number that manage to germinate is few, the number of saplings that are not eaten or trampled or knocked out are fewer. So the fact that this tree has made it is something marvellous.
As I viewed I thought, it's quite often so with people's dreams. Wonderful ideas come to our minds but they die too soon - we don't tend to the little saplings, we don't protect them as we should. And then one day we wonder what happened to our dreams - why did they never come true?
Maybe the seeds of your dreams did not automatically grow. Like planting an apple tree it might take many tries. Like the hundreds of tries to have that book published, you might send your manuscript out two hundred times before it is accepted. You might meet dozens of people until you met the true friend. You may have to paint many paintings till you stand back and feel you have produced something you truly like.
But if you keep on sowing the seeds of your dreams, one day you will succeed.
And after that others will comment on how lucky you are to be successful - when in fact you have probably failed more often than you would like to count. But you were good at failing, you learned, you adapted, and then with your new knowledge you tried again.
And again.
And again.
And one day success is yours.
I am sorry I am posting my apple again but it seems to fit this story so well. I have shown it completed in a mount and believe it or not signed. Yes I do like it.
I hope that today you dream dreams and that one of then becomes reality.
This blog is linked to my other. The Apple, Can I Tempt You? (Complete)
Apples and apple trees certainly provide us with abundant metaphors...
ReplyDeleteMy students have taken to bringing me apples every day, and I was thinking one day... WHY do apple trees need to encase their seeds in those huge pieces of fruit... and I realized that it's FOR US TO EAT THEM. We depend on the vitamins and minerals in that apple for our own existence. It struck me how interdependent everything on the earth is. But it bothers me that we don't seem to give anything back to the apple tree... except beautiful artwork like your!
What a nice post, Ralph! Dreams and apple trees... Dreams and ideas. Both need to be tended to, to accomplish them. Wonderful reminder.
ReplyDeleteGood Morning Ralph, great post, making today a better day! I live in The Wild West and Johnny
ReplyDeleteAppleseed was everywhere here but the best ones for sure are those tended and cared for and like dreams, they will bare fruit if worked at a little each day.
Not every apple seed makes an apple.. but the ones that do . if we take care of it, nurture it ..what a wondrous gift .
ReplyDeleteThere is an apple tree in my mother's backyard...totally there by accident. Someone discarded an apple ... and it grew a new tree. Quite a phenomenal story of survival really. Apple trees do not grown in Northern Ontario - at least none that I know of.
ReplyDeleteWhen my father discovered it growing he nurtured, protected and babied the sapling. The tree does not produce large apples...the growing season is too short anyway. But abundant 'crab' apple size which I harvest yearly and turn into jelly.
Every time I look at the tree I marvel at its will to survive and flourish.