Giving Tree?

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Giving Tree?

This wonder of nature is not a photoshop trick!

It's a tree in Montenegro that just happens to have a hollow core and just happens be growing over an underground spring that gushes every spring.

Too bad you can't plant a tree like that.

Or maybe it's not too bad? Maybe you don't want a pond in the back yard?

First questions for your table....Did you ever plant a tree? What about a fruit tree?

When we bought this house 13 years ago, it had about 4 trees. We now have over 30 trees on all sides of our home (mostly in the back yard).

Most started out as $14.99 saplings that I planted with my own hands and feet.

In fierce competition for tallest tree in the yard are a weeping willow and a fire maple. Of course, the willow wins branches-down for overall size.

When we bought the house, the backyard was a hot, unfriendly patch in the summer and a pond after a rainstorm. Today it's a shady, friendly urban oasis that never floods.

Trees are great.

Two of our trees masquerade as grape vines. 

Planting vines (or any fruit tree) triggers one of the only agricultural mitzvos that applies worldwide (most of them only pertain to the Land of Israel). Can you guess which one?

Answer: not eating the fruit of a tree until its fourth or fifth year.

This mitzvah is called orlah and teaches one of the greatest lessons in the Torah.

Question for your table - What's the lesson?

Shall I give you a hint? Modern technologies have made this lesson more pertinent than ever before.


Shabbat Shalom

PS....

I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest / Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day, / And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear / A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain; / Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree.
                                                                — Joyce Kilmer

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