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When your fruit trees speak to you
On finding analogies when out in the world, or, the power of nature and the body-mind connection.
Kamilla Milligan
June 30, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Asian pears, mid-thinning.
THE INTERVIEW
When the analogy lands in your hand
Last Friday, I headed to the back yard to thin our Asian pears. I was hyped up from a productive morning at work and eager to get this chore done (with the help of my child) before the trees wasted any more energy attempting to ripen a way-too-big crop.
If you’ve never thinned fruit before, let me tell you: it is hard.
Physically? Sure. You need to be reasonably limber and precise to avoid breaking off extra leaves and or damaging fruiting wood. Mentally it can also be a challenge: applying theoretical ratios about ideal fruit distance to the actual distribution of fruit on your tree (and ferreting out those sneaky ones hiding behind leaves).
The really hard part, though, is emotional. Every little green ball has the potential to grow into a delicious summer treat. And you need to pull off up to 90% of them. Every “plop!” in the bucket is a fruit you’ll never eat.
But then.
Then you remind yourself. Fruit trees set way more fruit than they can bear. Actually growing all those fruit to full size would use up all their energy, break branches, and stunt their growth, perhaps permanently.
The only way to protect the tree; the only way to ensure that some fruits actually ripen and grow to a good size; the only way to ensure the sustainability of your precious resource?
Is to prune.
Heavily.
Without remorse.
In my recent middle grade revision, I cut the draft from 63,000 words to 45,000 words. Working at speed, I finally practiced chopping intuitively, quickly letting go of stuff that might be good but that wasn’t serving the story as a whole. As I remembered my goal—a compelling, pacey story—the missing words didn’t hurt. Removing a ton of words filled me with excitement for what was left.
As summer comes, we’re cleaning things out of our space—dried herbs we didn’t use last year, extra supplies in the linen closet, books we’re not going to reread. The remaining space feels like it can breathe again after the stuffiness of winter.
Here’s to the joys of editing, knowing that we can properly enjoy what is left only because we let go of what didn’t need to be there.
Our buckets with edited fruit.
Next destination: the compost bin. Where (as the analogy continues) they will one day become soil and fertilize the trees.