RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,179
(it's been a long life, scoundrels)
I was talking with someone
the other day, the present day,
contemporary stuff, no past
reminiscence here. The result of
that conversation left me, as
I put it, 'feeling that all of
life is but a hoax.' I'll try to
encapsulate this here.
-
We have, for starters, a pear
tree on our property, about
50 or 60 feet from the house.
Last year it produced, perhaps,
10 pears, small sized but good.
This person, last year, said
that the key to a good fruit-tree's
production is proper trimming
and cutting back, and that those
left to grow, wild or untrimmed,
eventually simply diminish
their output - to fewer fruits
and a more gnarly, good for little,
tree. OK, I figured, makes sense,
though I'd never really thought
about it. So this year, at the
prescribed time, just about at
the turn of March/April, we
did(my wife did) trim the tree.
She climbed a little, using a
stepladder, trimming back the
top, and - as we were told -
'all the branches that point or
are growing downward.'
By blossom time at April's
end and early May, the white
blossoms were (finally) out,
and in a great profusion, with
the tree apparently no worse
for wear, and even better that
before. Now - today - Kathy
came and said I should look at
the tiny, little, pear beginnings
on the tree. I did! There are a
great many little, nascent, pears
taking shape.
-
That same tree guy from last year,
when I asked why this decided
difference would occur, said that
it was all pretty simple: Through
all of Nature, when a species, (tree,
etc.) feels threatened, it oversurpasses
itself in energetic propagation, as if
the beat out the impending doom and
spread the species. He then said that,
when a tree is pruned, it thinks it is
dying and the response is energetic
profusion of new bloom and blossom,
and - in these cases of fruit-trees -
energetic output of 'fruit.'
-
I remembered, upon hearing that, my
old, farm days in Columbia Crossroads,
PA, when, pretty much, the same thing
occurred when I asked both Warren
Gustin (who, by the way, had a nasty,
busy, rich with nectar'd pears, on limb
and ground, and a grand profusion of
bees as well, on the fallen fruit), and
Willard Brown, my two farmer-work
neighbors with whom I worked and
commingled in farm-chores. I asked
why a cow is always producing milk,
5:30 A.M. and 5:30 P.M. pretty much.
And chickens too, always producing
eggs. The answers were both pretty
much the same. By constantly milking
the cow, poor thing, we 'fool' it into
thinking it has a baby cow, a calf, still
around. Normally the milk would dry
up some time after birthing and weaning
of the calf - but by constant milking,
twice-a-day, we never let the cow feel
that it's mothering is not needed. The
resultant production-milking, whether
by hand (the old way) or the then,
1970's, modern way with automated
pumping and storage, the cow is
fooled. Kind of sad, but true.
-
The same thing went for chickens
always making eggs. I forget how that
one went, but it had something to do
with taking the chicks away and then
getting a steady, confused, production
of eggs from the poor hen thinking
she still needs to make chick. Crazy
as all get-out, I always thought.
-
Which just led me along - you know,
yes, me, the crazed one with a million
insipid ideas - to think about what else
in life is foisted upon us. The normal
run of fakery, probably beginning with
early hoe-life and running right through
school. We take it all, and accept it, and
we keep producing all our stupid junk,
under the assumptions that we've got
it all right. All that 'definite' crap about
Earth and the cosmos, the dinosaurs,
the feudal societies and the earlier
civilizations - as if anyone really
knew or could prove their BS. Except
that they get paid to wildly propagate
and never extinguish those same old
milk-pails full of pure drivel. Yes!
Everything's a hoax!!
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