Apricots from a bitter Plum tree.

About 1983 I put a pile of apricot seeds in the garden and the following year I had lots of small trees, that I started giving away the following year. One of the baby trees I gave away was very hardy. Even though the new owner kept mowing it down, it kept growing up again. In the end she decided it would have to stay and eventually it produced good crops of apricots.

I had received word from God that we would be shifting from that house so I said to Him that it would be nice if the people in the place He had for us would plant an apricot tree, so that by the time we moved in, there would be fruit for us.
Years passed and we ended up shifting to Australia. We had lost most of our material assets and so I withdrew my life insurance to use as a deposit on a small house that suited our small budget. We had said that we wanted our next house to have a view. This house had two pleasant views. The kitchen was a good size and looked out onto a pleasant garden area. At the time I was delighted with all the plants in the garden. It even had a Magnolia tree and I had planted at least one in all the places we had owned.

I began to think that we had made a mistake in buying the house. The Magnolia tree had died in the heat the previous Summer. The house was too small and the ceilings had started peeling. I had never seen peeling ceilings before and although I created an art work called "Silver Lining" from photos of the peelings and loved the look of them, I was disgruntled. I remembered my prayer from years earlier and thought, “It doesn't even have an apricot tree.” I went for a walk and thought that I would prefer a house that looked the other way so I could watch the spectacular sunsets. God reminded me immediately of our first morning in our present house. One of the children had called us to come and look at the spectacular sunrise overlooking the Black Mountain tower. I had praised God then that even though it didn’t have sunsets it had sunrises. The view had reminded me of a city watchtower where a prophet could look out and remember to pray for the city....I had not spent much time doing that.

The following evening I looked at one of the bitter plum tees we had and noticed some fruit growing on some of the new branches that I had let grow out from the heavily pruned stumps of what I thought was the original stock or grafted branches. You can guess what I saw! Apricots! Apricots from a bitter plum tree! I laughed and praised God. I was able to eat a few apricots from my tree. I counted the rings on the cut branch and it looked as though it was about 18 years old, so it could easily have been grafted on, around the time I had prayed.