A Bumper Crop

It’s been a busy summer and I haven’t had time to pay much attention to what’s going on in my yard, which lately looks rather like a scene from a Tarzan movie. But the other day I did happen to take note of my pear trees, and it looks like a bumper crop.

            I have four pear trees on my tiny piece of NJ property, and some years about four pears are all I get. But this year hundreds of pears are dangling from the branches, or dropping to the ground (and, I admit, are now swarming with bees and flies). I was so thrilled with the pears the first few years I lived here that I made every pear delicacy imaginable. Pear pie, pear crisp, pear cake, pear sauce, you name it. We don’t spray the pear trees, however, so cutting up the pears and removing the little worms that get into them can take a good long while, so after a few years of that I gave up.

            I then began gathering up the fallen pears with a wheelbarrow and tossing them into the compost. At least that way they weren’t wasted. I also offered the pears to neighbors (with a caveat about the worms, of course), and I remember one year when the kids loaded pears into their wagon and went up and down the block passing them out (again, with the requisite worm warning).
            It’s great that I have beautiful pear trees that grace my property with gorgeous white blossoms each spring, but the way things are now in my spinning little life, this bumper crop is sadly, “going to the dogs” (if dogs were interested in pears, which they seem not to be).

            Of course, this “got me thinking” about life in general, and about what other things might be dangling from metaphorical branches, waiting to be picked or plucked, and about how many things might go unnoticed, or not taken advantage of. And it came to me that the “Universe” (or whatever word you choose to describe the forces that converge to allow things to happen in our lives) offers us so many gifts every day that it’s virtually impossible to pick them all. Some fall to the ground. Some we just don’t notice. Some we suspect might have worms so we don’t even give them a chance.

            Most of us have a bumper crop whether we know it or not. We have endless choices and possibilities before us every day. We have family, friends, opportunities, and blessings in our lives that we don’t even see (and some that we do). It makes me wonder why I ever whine or complain. On any given day, the ripe, juicy, pears are infinite.