Bonsai

After my first year of college, I served as the summer youth director for a church in Greenville, Mississippi. After my second week of working for the church, the pastor’s wife invited me to have lunch with them on the next Sunday. My mama did not raise a fool, so I quickly accepted the invitation. I knew that a good home cooked meal would beat the PB &J sandwich I would be having at the room I was renting for the summer.

I arrived at the pastor’s home, and they had invited another guy who was about 10 years older than me. I learned that Joe worked for a company that was building a gas line through the area.

The Pastor’s wife brought several dishes to the dining room table. It smelled good, but I could not identify a couple of the dishes. I was eating some kind of mushy green stuff with cheesy gravy and a dish with ground hamburger. I got that green mushy stuff down with an ample serving of cheesy gravy. That did not go unnoticed. The Pastor’s wife said to me that she would prepare some more cheese sauce if I wanted a second helping of the broccoli. I ate my first broccoli that day.  

At that point in my life, I had not been exposed to many of the culinary choices that many other people had. I was just a guy who loved mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits with butter and jelly, purple hull peas and boiled okra with cornbread, and of course fried chicken. We also ate a lot of corn, tomatoes in season, butter beans, chicken and dumplings, ham, pork chops and chocolate or lemon pie.

Later that afternoon, I had to ask Joe the name of the main dish. He laughed and made fun of me, but he later confessed that was only the second time he had eaten broccoli. I learned from Joe that we had eaten a ground beef casserole. That casserole was also a first for me. I asked him what those grayish dark slices of soft something were. He laughed and told me they were mushrooms.

I thought that is what they looked like, but I had never eaten mushrooms so I kinda ate around them. I had read in the encyclopedia in high school that most species of mushrooms were either poisonous or dangerous to eat. The end of this story is that sauteed mushrooms with a bit of onion is one of my favorite dishes.

After lunch the pastor escorted Joe and me outside. He had several dozen tiny trees and shrubs on shelves in his backyard. He called them bonsai. He explained to me that bonsai is an ancient Japanese artform of controlling the size of the plants by periodically cutting away some of the roots and branches of the tree or shrub. I had worked in our family garden since I was knee high to a grasshopper, but this was my first introduction to bonsai.

When I returned to college classes in the fall, I continued to work at the church every weekend. One Sunday when I was invited to lunch at the Pastor’s home, I asked him to show me his bonsai plants. He groaned and I wondered what I had said that resulted in his total disdain at my request to see his bonsai. After he cooled down, he said that a crop-duster—an airplane that sprays chemicals on the large farm crops—had overshot the cotton field behind his house and the defoliate chemical had killed all his tiny trees.

I did not blame him for being angry, as he had worked for ten years nurturing them, and in a moment, they were dead as a doorknob.

Fast forward about 40 years, and my stepmother-in-law was downsizing, and she knew that I loved house plants, so she offered to give me her 40-year-old Ficus bonsai. I kindly thanked her for such a great gift. I also noted that as long as she is living my job is to keep that tree alive.

That first bonsai was about 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide, and it would take up significant space in our house. I had previously owned three Ficus plants, and I had learned that they do not like to be moved around. Find a happy spot for them and they will flourish. A metal glass topped table in our sunroom is my giant Ficus’ home in the cold months, and a table on the front porch is its warm months home.

One of the fun things about owning bonsai plants is that over the years you get to shape them. Each spring I give my bonsai a haircut. I cut the new growth buds off, and over the ensuing months until haircut time, I trim leaves and small branches that do not conform to my desired shape.

As I prune my bonsai, I always think of John 15 and particularly verse 2: “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

To grow spiritually, find purpose, and maintain a healthy relationship with Christ, we must remove negative influences and diversions from our life. If we choose to prioritize God and place Him at the center of our life, we cannot continue to pursue worldly practices that don't correspond with godly values.