It's always a celebration, spotting the first fruit blossom of the year. Here, in midwinter cold, a single flower upon 'Chojuro', one of the cornerstone Asian pear varieties distinguishing themselves, in my experience, as the most productive class of fruit trees in the PNW.
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Chojuro flower held toward the camera, Latif the faithful hound lurking in the background.
5/ We're resolutely supporting grassroots uptake of Asian pears and with that, in effect, deep ecumenicism's eco-cultural cornerstone - planetary biodiversity as a 'greater assimilative space' of peaceful promise and power. A cocoon of holy reconciling spinning itself into being.
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I also adore the uniquely distinctive character of Asians - their inner essence, in a sense. Very vigorous relative to other fruit types, their powerful life-force also belies a spirited unruliness, a sometimes wild unpredictability - particularly so in response to the ministrations of newbie pruners, as yet uninitiated to subtleties of the Leonine Dance. Around winter-spring pruning in particular, when cutting will tend to unleash rather than halt or temper growth, I can never be quite sure what will happen next. How and which way will you turn or not, my powerfully expressive, fiercely iconoclastic friend?