Pruning

Cutting back for me and for you

A profusion of blossoms on that bully of a plum tree.

You know me, always full of good gardening notions that are really personal revelations I can only find vicariously through plants.

I went through this really huge thing in my life over the last couple of weeks. It’s not worth me going into the details, but I can sum it up in a few good phrase – painful growth, cutting things out that are not serving my life, deciding how to let go, choosing less. And in processing all of these things, I found myself out in the early spring garden with pruning shears in hand.

Spring in the Pacific Northwest is fickle. Sometimes we get a glorious week of sunshine and warmth in February, and it’s just enough to get us past the next 6 or 8 weeks of cold drizzle to the real spring of April. But this year the chill held until mid-March, whereupon the sun broke free from the clouds and warmed everything up to sultry seventies during the day. I took to it with vigor. This was exactly what I needed to salve the physical and emotional things I was facing, and hoo boy were there plenty of those.

So here is the pruning wisdom I have for you.

First off, be sure your pruners are clean, sharp, and tuned up. Even less spendy pruners work better with a little oil in their joints and a fresh spring to bounce back. Blades can be sharpened by hand or replaced on some types. There’s good reason to clean your pruners with a bit of bleach solution to ensure you’re not transmitting diseases from one plant to another, but don’t obsess over it. Most trees and shrubs are pretty forgiving if you make mistakes.

Next, take your time. Walk around and examine the tree you’re working on from all angles. Let the sunlight blind you every so often. It’s okay to enjoy the whimsy of the moment, the warm breeze, the soft hum of insects emerging and looking for blossoms. Pruning is part science, part art, and the medium is often more forgiving than we realize.

The first apple tree pruned and replanted in its new home.

I left my apple trees to grow based on their own determination for the first three years after planting them in the garden. You get to decide who you are, I said to them. Some of them grew straight up, others spread. Some leaned, pulled down by the heavy burden of too many fruits come late summer or fall. A couple ended up feeling crowded based on my inadequate math or the encroaching branches of a neighbor (like that monster of a plum tree). We don’t always know what growth will look like until we’re swamped by it, and then we’re stuck in a crowded orchard that we can’t walk through without getting face slapped by a rogue branch.

It has taken me years to understand that me pruning those branches back isn’t just about loving my trees, it’s about loving me, too.

Love without limits or boundaries is wild and free and beautiful, but it can choke itself in the worst ways. As I set about snipping long branches and hacking back limbs, it was hard to imagine each tree appreciating that work. It felt painful. I was letting go of growth in a direction that didn’t fit my needs, and who am I to make such a decision? If that tree had a voice would it yell at me? Would it tell me to knock it off and go dig dirt instead?

Worst of all, my lovely little pear tree was on the chopping block all the way down to the root ball this year. It’s been suffering from rust, which happens to pears when they are planted too close to cedar trees. Look around the PNW and find me a spot where there are no cedars. Please. Like for real. And don’t say Eastern Washington either. That’s a two-hour drive away. End result? I chopped that poor tree right down to the ground and pulled out the remnants of it.

Farming and growing things can be harsh sometimes.

Life can be like that, too.

Spring rhubarb emerging.

It’s not a stretch to consider the parallels of boundaries in your life to fences in your garden, planting seeds when you need to feel hope, or pruning branches to cut back dead growth and salvage the vibrant life within. And that was my task.

The first tree I hacked back to life was one that moved from its original site to where the first greenhouse had just been removed. We have more space there now that the structure is gone, and the second greenhouse is up and doing the heavy lifting elsewhere. But you cannot transplant a tree without cutting back on its upper growth, otherwise it will run out of resources to regrow roots and establish itself. Simply put, you can’t take it (all) with you. Nobody can uproot themselves and expect to keep every branch and leaf at full force.

The next collection of trees have all borne fruit, loads of fruit, but that comes at a cost. Leggy growth and unsupported limbs mean fractures and breakage. Energy devoted to fruit production leaves less for the rootstock to use over winter.

I can eat now, or I can eat for years to come. That isn’t always an easy choice.

As I cut and trimmed and gently inspected the balance and symmetry of my work, I felt the pain of letting go of those parts that had grown in intrusive ways. They weren’t bad branches. There’s no such thing. But some of them crossed others. They competed for space and air movement with neighboring trees. Their independence was sacrificed, and the community wasn’t benefitting.

Pruning apple trees is delicate work. It needs to be done in dry weather to prevent infections in the wounds to the trees, and when I type that out I feel forced to acknowledge that I wounded my own trees with those cuts. They will heal over time, with the right amount of light and dry air, but the redirection of their growth will always press against those scars, and those scars were made by me.

I will heal over time, too. So will you.

I pruned those branches for me; for passage between the trees, for comfort raising them, for the ability to keep them healthy. I pruned those branches because I was also pruning myself.

This isn’t me healing you or giving you some magical way to get outdoors and build your own therapy. This is me telling you that the only place I can cope with some of my own feelings is to stand in my garden and talk to those trees. Who else would understand pruning shear therapy? Who’s gonna stand still and let me lop off a limb while I confront inner turmoil?¹

Bottom line, I might have killed one of those damn trees. It might not survive. Talk to the pear if you think I’m blowing that out of proportion. In a garden, you never know if the decision you make will result in life or death. It’s always a gamble.

If I prune this branch of myself, will I survive? Or will I break further from the loss?

Well, I’m about to turn 46 years old this weekend. Maybe a good, hard pruning was exactly what I needed right about now. I don’t know which wounds will heal and which scars will be left behind from it, but the work will happen regardless. My shears are sharp and oiled, and I am cutting, and I will hold my breath while I wait for hope to grow somewhere near.

Your trans friend,

Robin

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1. Okay, so there’s an entire monologue here about the ways in which trans people pursue surgeries and hormones and other types of treatments for our bodies and brains that really is like standing still to lop off a limb, but that’s for another day. Just so you know, I see the irony and humor in it.