Vine

A lady whose garden I help look after asked me yesterday to completely remove the lush trailing vine that was a feature of her back garden.  The vine did not produce edible grapes, but its leaves were picked through the season for making dolmades, a traditional Green dish; but no more, alas - her Greek Cypriot husband passed away last year, and maybe the vine, growing so lushly, was too potent a reminder of his absence.

So the vine had to go (the main stem remains, so it will grow back, if allowed to), but it was a sad task to remove it, the more so in that the vine is such a symbol of life in Scripture.  It is such a free-growing plant, so rampant in its profusion of new leaves and shoots - and is held up as an example of self-sacrifice, as the trailing branches, which need to be supported as they cannot support themselves, are supposed to pass on all of their strength and vigour to the fruit, keeping nothing back.  No wonder Jesus shared a cup of wine on the eve of his crucifixion.

The lushness of the growth of this vine could be in part I suppose because it had not been cut back as usual before the growing season - but I imagine this year's warm summer will also have played its part.  Anyhow, there was growth a-plenty - a large builder's sack was filled to the brim with the collected leaves and branches.

They will be recycled, composted - and so life goes on.  But this potent symbol of life remains only as a shadow of what it was, and I am sorry to have been the one who had to wield the shears.