Why Is Your Blog Title About An Ugly Tree?

There are several reasons:

1.      1.  It makes people wonder. Her tree is ugly?  Is this a metaphor for something?  Does she really have an ugly tree in her backyard that she’s obsessed with or something? 

2.    2.  It is a metaphor.

3.     3. I am promoting an eventual book with a similar title. 

Those things being said, my husband made an interesting observation relating to the tree thing last night.  He said that back in biblical times, everyone was a farmer, a fisherman, or a shepherd.  And he said that it still seems true today.

So I started wondering, am I a farmer, a fisherman, or a shepherd?

And I think I’m a shepherd by nature and that’s why I became a teacher; because I love to get a bunch of people going in the same direction to accomplish a goal.  I’m not patient enough to be a fisherman.  I am not good at throwing a line out there and waiting for someone else to bite on it.  I do not have the patience for that shit.  I love when other people have that sort of patience with me, but I just can’t do it.  Waiting for fish to take the bait?  I don’t have time for that. 

When it comes to mothering, I’m a farmer.   I plant little seeds.  “Say thank you.”  “Use your manners.”  “Be a gentleman.”  “Are you being kind and loving to your brother?”  I water those seeds.  “Thank you for being so kind by sharing with your brother.”  And if the watering isn’t enough, then I resort to fertilizing the soil with a little manure.  “You hit your brother in the head with a baseball bat?  No more baseball today.”  The problem is that I’m not a very patient farmer.  I tend to want to stand over the seeds and say, “Grow!”  And sometimes I pile on a bunch of manure to get faster results.  I’m not so sure that this is the right way to go.  The seeds don’t necessarily respond to the farmer telling them what to do, and the more manure a farmer piles on, the more crap a seed’s gotta work through in order to get to the surface to bloom.  Then again, we all need fertilizer to grow.  Some of us need more manure than others.  But some of us just need the gardener to stand beside us and tell us that it’s okay to grow.