Maverick Sprouts

I was doing some yard work at a property we manage (what better time than February to do landscaping), and decided to trim up some bushes which sit in the front and back of tenant signs.  The bushes are Dwarf English Boxwoods - great for this application because they grow so slowly.  We keep them trimmed in a round shape.

The bushes when we planted them.

 About the time I began to trim, the thought occurred to me that the branches that get cut off are the ones that stick out, which is obvious, as the whole point of trimming is to make the bush uniform.  These branches are the ones that, for some reason, broke away from the crowd.  The bushes required very little trimming, except for these maverick branches.  In order to produce the desired effect, these maverick branches had to go.

Now perhaps you are trying to get one step ahead of me and are beginning to think of pruning as mentioned in the Bible.  Don't.  This is not where I'm going.  The pruning mentioned in the Bible is a different idea, at least I think and hope so.

What I did think about was people who break away from the crowd.  These are people who grow off in a different direction.  They poke out in odd ways.  They do not conform to the general shape which the rest of the people have formed.

The temptation is to want to trim off those branches - those people - in order to give the group a uniform shape, for the good of the whole, I suppose, or for some common goal.

This can be a mistake.  Trimming bushes is o.k.  Trimming people isn't.  Yes, sometimes people need some guidance if they are too far outside the box, but care must be taken.

Since I was the one holding the shears (actually, it was a pair of tin snips, which was what I had available in my truck) you would think I would be looking at the little bushes from the perspective of the gardener.  But I actually got caught up in the perspective of the branch - the one that pops out from the crowd.  It may relish in the moment, in which case it will be fine.  Or it may wonder why it doesn't look like the rest of the bush, and debate in its little branch brain whether it should be more "ordinary".  This branch may need someone to say "It's o.k. to be out there... you are there for a good reason."

Immediately, some people came to mind.  I called one of them on the phone, and assured him that while he may feel like he is stuck out there, he is actually one of the healthiest branches on the whole bush. (In all honesty, I called him, but didn't communicate this as clearly as I would have liked.)

The random sprouts from this bush got trimmed regardless.  No one would understand if I left them to prove a point.