Mulberry Tree

      Our family has special affection for mulberry trees. My mother would relate to us, how, as a child, she would climb up in a mulberry tree, in her yard, and read a book, as she picked sweet mulberries, to eat. So, too, when I was a child, there was a mulberry tree in the corner of my yard, that I would climb into and pick and eat the berries.
      I decided to add mulberry trees to our yard and ordered 2 mulberry seedlings from an on-line company. They were a little smaller than I expected, when they arrived—maybe 5 inches tall each. They were too small to plant outside, so I carefully nurtured them indoors for several years, until they were 3 feet tall and transplanted them outside, about 50 feet apart. Each was carefully marked, and watched as they grew, to about 6 feet this year.
      One of my children had introduced me to the smart phone application, “plantnet”, which allows one to photograph a plant, and then the application identifies the plant. This has been so useful in identifying unknown plants in the yard and elsewhere. Often now, when weeding a garden, I will identify a weed, before pulling it up. In weeding a raspberry patch, I had been fighting with a large weed for several years. It was too tough to pull up, so I usually ended up cutting off the upper branches. This year, I noticed that the leaves on this weed were rather distinctive-looking, so decided to identify it with plantnet, before once again, trying to pull it up and trimming it. Much to my utter amazement, this “weed” was identified by plantnet as “black mulberry”. This is the exact same tree, that I had ordered and carefully grown inside for a few years, before planting outside. Those black mulberries are healthy and are now 6 feet tall. However the “weed” black mulberry tree had grown to 12 feet tall, despite being hacked down every year! This tree is probably 200 feet away from each of the other black mulberries.
      Needless to say, this newly-identified “weed” was left undisturbed, even as other weeds in the vicinity were identified on plantnet and pulled up. However, it may be a few years before any of the black mulberries bear fruit, as the tree usually does not bear fruit for 10 years, according to information on the internet.
      So, how it is with life. We can make careful plans and execute them on schedule, spending much time and labor. And yet, God has His own plan, that we might be unwittingly thwarting. In the end, God’s plan is so beautiful and perfect.