I made a peach pie. Yum yum.

I took the pits out of the peaches before I cooked them into that pie.
I put the pits into my compost bucket.
Later, I emptied my compost bucket into my compost pile.

Many compost piles get very hot.
This kills all the seeds in the finished compost.
I love weeds. I don't want to kill their seeds.
So I make cool compost.
With the help of my friends the worms.

A year and a half later, I spread my finished cool compost on my flower bed.
A peach tree started to grow.

I trust life's sweetness and abundance to survive and spring forth.

It grew very fast: doubling its size every year.
Then it blossomed.
And every fertilized blossom became a peach.
There were hundreds of peaches.
Sometimes a dozen or more on one small branch.

The peaches grew bigger and bigger.
Then . . . With a crash!
The right side of the peach tree broke and fell to the ground.
It was too heavy to pick up or to prop up.

We picked peaches.
They were green. They were hard.
They were more like apples than peaches.

I cooked them.
They "melted," releasing a phenomenally peachy smell.
Each mouthful was a fresh delight of intense peach flavor.

I trust my ability to turn hard knocks into powerful softness.

We ate peach cobbler and peach pie and baked peaches with ice cream and cooked and froze lots peaches too.

Then. . . With a sigh
The left side of the peach tree peeled away and came to rest on the ground.
It was too heavy to pick up or to prop up.

​

We picked peaches.
We ate peaches roasted with summer vegetables, peaches cooked with honey into chunky peach sauce, and froze lots of cooked peaches too.
Then. . . With a mighty groan
The main trunk of the peach tree broke in half and smashed to the ground.
It was way too heavy to move at all.

When all seems lost, I grieve. Then I wait. Yin becomes Yang. The spiral turns.

We picked peaches.
We made umeboshi pickled peaches, we lacto-fermented peaches, we dreamed about peaches, we cooked peaches with big meaty beach rose hips and some honey and ate the resulting pink sauce on everything.
We froze rose hip and peach sauce too.

What to do with the broken peach tree?
"Give me a chance," said the peach deva to me.
"Prune you?" I wondered.
"Watch me." She was firm.

The deer nibbled the tips of the peach branches when snow was thick.
Spring sun pulled shoots upward from the fallen branches.
A beautiful peach bush took shape.

Being broken is part of my wholeness.
I respond to my environment and know how to thrive.

We picked peaches. They grew as a gift of the compost.
We ate peaches. They were hard and sour, until they were cooked and sweetened.
We admired the peach bush. It was broken, but it didn't care. . .

JOY
Was everywhere