grafting
what confidence does a sapling have in growing when every branch is someday pruned?
(but if leaves can grow, she can feel the sun)
I KNOW THIS IS THE SUN.
And we need each other.
I know in the seed of my heart the difference between growth and graft (but only for myself... I cannot see for others).
But a tree can't prune itself...
Did you know many fruit trees are grafted?
They cut every branch off of a hardy rootstock and slice the productive portions of a valuable tree (the scion—same word as that which means heir, like a baroness's daughter's "son") off at the trunk and line up the open wounds. They do this because a scion cannot grow strong roots (a silver spoon is replaceable).
You'd think this wouldn't work, that the tree would die. Sometimes it does. (Not everything cut down is a tree)
But grafting is a science.
Under the right conditions, the wound closes up and the rootstock that would grow bitter fruits is productive.
And it's well known what to do with the rootstock's stray branches ("suckers" so called because they suck the tree of its nutrients that really ought to be used better).
Prune them unsparingly.
People say as a tree gets older, the graft is either invisible, or a bump forms and grows and grows at the old woundsite.
Does such a tree remember the light on her leaves as just a sapling? When she first feels the sun will she let the scion die?
Will she trust in the feeling of the sun, or confuse it with the illusion of the scion's leaves unfurling?
Who could help such a tree but a (retired) gardener with the help of the sun (and he is both of these).
Or a butterfly's kiss.
Or the touch of a dandelion seed blown from far away on a wish and carried by the wind, that came to rest so delicately by her.
The sun and a dandelion seed (white like the moon or a ghost or the shell of an egg).
Dandelions are eudicots. Their tiny seeds carry a pair of embryonic leaves that grow or die together on opposite sides of the same stem.
A dandelion is a weed. It is well accepted to pluck it from the ground and spray poison on its roots.
But a seed can remain aloft on wind near indefinitely (but is that living? Can a seed be said to be alive? It can certainly die... And how alive is the wind that carries it...)
I think to most rootstocks, it feels like dying if the scion is removed. It is only indirectly through the grafting above him that the rootstock can feel the sun, after all.
But please remember you can grow your own branches. They may not grow straight, but they're true.
Did it ever feel right in my heart when people ate "my" fruit? (Was it sweet, your fantasy of who I was?)
Or did it feel right when they nurtured "my" growth or admired "my" leaves and branches?
At times it must have. But not so much that when the (retired) gardener came with some mean looking shears I didn't ask for help.
I think somewhere deep in my heart I am very afraid in false growth (is it me or the graft).
But I kinda think most people are (I think it is not uncommon to find a fruit tree! They're grown in large rectangular orchards and are quite profitable), they just often don't trust they can grow branches or don't remember the feeling of the sun on their own leaves. Or maybe they like the graft (look how big I've grown! Look at my fruits and leaves amd branches! Isn't grafting worth it? Aren't the teachers who cut children in half doing such noble self sacrificing work?)
If this isn't the sun and my own branches, I simply don't ever remember being alive. Heart ground down to sand. Ah well! Can't win 'em all! May as well get a decent job 🤣
(Life is too important for grafted growths.)