Die back

 Earlier this year I had the chance to spend a few hours in a forest in England with a forester who is a dear friend of mine.  It was the first time Id seen him in his place of work and as he gave a guided tour of 'his wood' I was amazed at his knowledge.  Every tree, every plant and insect and birdsong had a story.  He just rattled off the information as we wandered around.  The best I could do was identify three or four common trees.  He was able to identify a woodpecker from its song, spot where it was nesting and discern the species from the briefest of glimpses of the adult bird as it came back to its nest to feed its chick. 

As we toured the woods he started talking about Ash dieback.  Its a disease similar in its effect to Dutch Elm disease.  It is tearing though British woodland killing off Ash trees at a rate of knots and there is no way to stop it. He was pointing out trees which had it.  They looked perfectly healthy to me.  They were in full leaf and seemed strong and tall and robust.  But as I looked more closely, with the help of his expert eye, I began to see that the ends of some branches had no leaves on them.  Ever since then Ive been looking as Ash trees where I live and seeing if I can spot the signs.  Im not sure that I can; I dont have 30 years of expertise.

And then there was this

This was a lovely rooted Christmas tree two years ago and it did really well the first year I put it outside after Christmas.  But last year when it went outside it just seemed to get sadder and sadder.  It was definitely dying.  I sent this pic to my forester and asked for any advice he could offer.  He immediately said 'too much water'.  So I took it out of its pot to let the rootball dry out a bit, repotted in a bigger and better drained pot and studiously DIDNT water it for a while - even when the weather was hot.  And guess what?? Miracles do happen ! Its growing again!  

new shoots! hooray!

And that's the thing. It can be  hard to spot the first signs of dying unless you are really really well acquainted with what living looks like.  And if you can spot the signs of dying you need to know what to do to reverse the process.  I assumed that brown needles meant thirsty tree.  But what it actually meant was drowning tree!  What I thought was helping was making it worse.  I needed an expert.  We all need an expert from time to time

Jesus is the master gardener. He is the expert shepherd, the owner of the best vines in the vineyard and the maker of the best wine.  He sees any and every sign of death in us and knows why we are dying and what to do.  Sometimes the branches need to be cut down and thrown in the fire.  Sometimes we need to be planted up into a bigger pot. Sometimes what we think is bringing us life, isnt.  Asking Him is always the first and best thing to do whenever we are confronted with anything in our own, or someone elses life, which needs to be fixed.  Thanks to a bit of tree expertise I might just have a serviceable Christmas tree this year.  It may have a few bald patches but it definitely wont be dead!