Many of the plants that were in our garden during this drawing project were planted and left by prior owners of our home. The grapevine was one of them. It always reminded me of a grapevine that I grew up with in my childhood that would produce the sweetest grapes each year in the late summer. It’s such a nice memory to have - eating the grapes off the vine and spitting out the seeds (and sometimes the skins).

But this grapevine rarely bore fruit. I think out of over 15 years, we only saw fruit twice. Every year the vine would grow like crazy (almost to the point of tipping over the fence under its weight). It’s like the word GROWTH was a no-brainer. All this vine did was grow and grow and grow!  So every year, without knowing anything about gardening, we would find ourselves pruning the grapevine out of necessity. This drawing was made from one of the trimmed branches.

When I look back at this card (and the plant), what comes up for me is how unhindered growth - growth just for growth’s sake - may not always translate to useful or productive growth. The grapevine actually thrives when it is pruned and I wonder if the years that it produced fruit were ones when we somehow managed to prune it correctly. I don’t know if any of you have ever tried pruning - it’s hard to know which branches need to stay and which ones can go! 

So maybe there is a lesson here from this grapevine, asking us not only what it is we need to do to GROW in our own lives, but what do we do to PRUNE in a way that leads us to the places where we can enjoy the fruit and sweetness of our efforts.