Before moving to our home in the forest I had the understanding that if you wanted to remove a tree, then you cut the tree down. Nothing left but a stump. End of tree.
But oh no … au contraire! (on the contrary!)
Trees can actually grow back from a chopped-down stump!
I had no idea!
I have since discovered the most impossible among trees to get rid of are Big Leaf Maples. They are beastly tenacious! Their stumps will re-sprout, and re-sprout, and re-sprout! Year after year after year! It’s downright maddening.
Last Fall, hubby and I learned in our Forestry Class that trees actually store up sugars and nutrients in their roots so that they can produce sprouts from the roots and stump, as a survival mechanism. Our Forestry professor referred to this as a “Bank.” I can’t remember the exact forestry term for it. All I remember is that it is a “Bank.”
Trees store up sugars and nutrients in their “root bank” … in order to survive.
Here you can see a Big Leaf Maple stump out in front of our house. Hubby and I have been lopping off sprouted branches from this stump year after year after year (ever since we’ve lived here!). And yet, here you can see, this year there is a whole new set of young branches trying to re-grow back from the old stump. And we need to lop them off once more!
Whenever I look at this stump, the verse comes to mind: “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” – Luke 6:45
What is stored up in your “root bank”?
When you feel “chopped off” in life … how do you respond?
When things happen in life that leave you feeling “cut down” … devastated … nothing left but a “stump” … … what has been stored up in your “root bank”?
When you feel as if you are in “survival mode” … what can be seen sprouting from the “stump” of your life?
“The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” – Luke 6:45
