Can You See The Abundance?

 

My dad loves nature and began his career as a forester, so I see trees differently than most people.  The trees are telling me now about the abundance coming in our immediate future.  Can you see the promise of future prosperity around you?

 

 As a kid, any family drive in the car or stroll around the back yard involved a conversation about trees.  What kind of trees were growing where and why, what each type of tree was good for, and how to identify them both up close and at a distance.  My mind had been so well-trained for it I actually took dendrology as my required science class in college.  So when I drive past a section of woods, I don't just see the forest, I see the trees.

This time of year in Atlanta the fruit trees are all in bloom.  There are wild cherry trees in the woods here, as well as some wild pear trees that have escaped from more domesticated ancestors.  There are burned out homesteads where the only evidence of their civilized past are daffodils along the path from the street to the house where the sidewalk used to be and the gnarled remains of an old fruit tree in the front yard.  South of here are the fields of peach trees.  I haven't driven past, but I'd bet they are blooming as well.

If you know what you are looking for, those flowers are signals.  “Come back this summer,” they say, “and there will be fruit here.”  How is it that people will go hungry this summer as fruit rots on the ground around these trees?  Because if you don't know what you are looking at, you literally will not see it.  You may not notice the flowering tree at all.  If you do, you may not tie that to the idea of summer fruit.  You see the same thing I do, but your brain misses what it means, because your brain isn't looking for fruit outside.  If you want fruit, your brain takes you to the grocery store.

At our house in Smyrna, there was an apple tree in the front yard.  Every year we had our own mini apple festival, baking apple pies and apple tarts, but it was always more than we could take advantage of.  In the years we lived there, I only had one family knock on the door to ask if we minded if they picked apples.  Of course we were happy to share, as we had more than we needed.

Just as there are flowering fruit trees around you that you aren't seeing, there are business and financial opportunities around each of us that we aren't seeing.  Become a student of business, as I have been a student of trees, and you will begin to see the abundance all around you that today you cannot see.