Growing Straight and Tall

I love a bargain, so when I found, at just a fraction of the regular price, the right tree for a certain spot in my front yard, I was pretty pleased with myself! This amur maple will flower in the spring, have interesting seeds, and display scarlet foliage in the fall. It won’t grow too tall, and more importantly, it won’t get very wide. It must be the perfect tree!

Except for one thing: It had a decided bow in its slender trunk. “No problem,” the nurseryman assured me. “You’ll need to stake it, and it will be fine.” I planted it carefully, just as instructed. I watered it faithfully. But I put off staking it, and after awhile winter came. It was too cold and the ground was frozen. Spring came, and I didn’t stake the tree because I was too busy. Then summer came, and I didn’t do it because it was too hot. Another fall, another winter, and finally another spring.

“I have this little maple tree,” I told a friend who stakes trees as part of her job. “Well, actually, it’s not so little any more, but it’s bent and it needs to be staked.”

So Joan came and took care of my tree, telling me to leave it staked until the next summer. For over a year the tree had wires pulling it in balanced directions. It didn’t look to me like the tree was standing much straighter, and sure enough, when I cut the wires and pulled up the stakes, it was still bowed.

“This won’t do,” I thought, and so I looked at the staking kits available at the garden shop. I talked to the nurseryman--a different one--about my crooked tree.

“When did you plant it?” he asked.

“Three years ago, in the fall.”

“It’s too late,” he said. “Staking it now won’t help. The top will tend to straighten as it grows taller, but it will always keep the bow in its trunk. That will just give it character,” he added with a smile.

Some of us have a quite a lot of that kind of “character,” don’t we! We bent in certain ways as we formed our habits and lifestyles, and it is easier just to keep our accustomed attitudes and behaviors. But remember that the grace of God, appropriated by our earnest intention, can alter the display of our life. We may still have the bent place from our early formation, but it is possible for us in later years to grow straight and tall.

MaryMartha
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Email: mrymrtha@gmail.com