Post-op

I usually love pruning my flower bed.  It's like giving my roses a haircut.  I  anticipate how lovely they'll look come summer.

But yesterday's pruning was hard.  Even painful.  It felt less like a trim and more like surgery.   

You see, I've been worried about one of our roses, a bush that was planted in our yard approximately 100 years ago.  It was full of flowers our first year on the property, but after I cut it back last year, it hardly bloomed.   

That is rare.  Usually the right kind of pruning makes the roses stronger.  So, a friend who is a rosarian graciously came over for a look.

 

 

Last Spring's blooms on the Lady Banks

She said the rose was perfectly healthy, and I hadn't hurt it at all.  In fact, it needed to be cut back even more.  Almost to the ground.  Though it was healthy, it had developed years of twists and turns that were hindering it from being the magnificent plant it was intended to be. It was doing okay, but it wasn't its best. And it certainly wasn't going to grow right until it was deeply pruned.

As I snapped off dead rose branches, I thought about a part of the Bible (John 15:3) where Jesus compares himself to a vine, people to branches and God the Father to a Vinedresser.  Jesus says, ^"He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit."  

A branch that bears no fruit.  Not a bit.  Like the gray sticks at the ends of my rose canes, it is dead and useless to the plant. And for the plant to thrive, it needs cut off.  

So, I kept cutting.  

That verse in the book of John continues: "While every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."  

Pruning the Sunshine Daydream rose

As I pruned, removing all the leaves from my precious plants and cutting so much away, I could see dozens of tiny buds remaining, full of potential.  As I let in more air and light, it was as if each plant was getting a fresh start.  The water and soil would feed the hearts better, without going to nourish fruitless appendages and bad habits.  

I found how parts of my giant old dame rosebush had become so twisted that it was literally choking itself.  The right kind of snips set it free, so it could grow straight and tall and powerful again.  I only trimmed what it didn't need anyway.

As I moved on to prune the fuchsias, thimbleberries and big purple-flowered shrub, I found ivy wrapping around branches and climbing a fence.  I marveled at how powerfully strong the vines were.  And I thought again of words from John 15:  “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." 

My ivy is the wrong kind of vine and needs removed.  But when we abide. . . dwell. . . live in Jesus. . . .  Wow, what power.   

 

Peter with one of the fuchsia plants before and after its makeover.

My garden looks much different today.  A little sparse, I guess.  The fuchsia branches that towered overhead are little sticks.  The roses are barren of leaves and blossoms.  And you know what?  They will probably need pruned again next year.  The Amplified Bible notes that God "repeatedly" prunes every fruitful branch.  It's the same thing in my flower bed.  Pruning is not a one time thing like removing an appendix or getting a heart transplant.  It has to happen from time to time.

When the pile for the green waste bin is taller than the plants you have left behind, it is difficult.  But I trust my friend.  And when the master who knows the plant better than you do tells you what needs done, it's worth listening and obeying. 

And oh, how beautiful my plants will be soon.  How much stronger.  They will bear witness to the skill of my friend and to my faithful obedience to her instructions.  They will be glorious masterpieces someday soon. . . and I will be, too. 

 

Thanks to Philip Throssel for his photos of me!