Like Christians know, Jesus Christ used to preach in parables. During the various journeys with His apostles and disciples, He freed people from evil spirits and sicknesses. In one the parables, He talked about the growth of the smallest seed but once sown, it shoots up and grows taller than any garden herb, putting out great branches for birds to come and settle.
This eternal parable fits well with the life history of a plantation tree.
While the office man is its apostle, the field man is its disciple. In its early stages, the seed is collected, dried stored and sown in the nursery to begin its cycle.
Like a mother bringing up her child, the nursery man has the duty of looking after this seed and enables it to germinate. It is then shifted into either a transplant bed or a polythene tube where its growth continues.
From the time it is sown, it must be watered, weeded, root pruned and hardened off until it is considered big enough to be taken to the field for planting. At this stage, if well looked after and has not suffered any setbacks, it is approximately 39.99cm tall.
After the plant is out of the hands of the nurseryman, it is now the time for the field man to attend it for the rest of its life. This transfer from nursery to the field is comparable to a child beginning to walk, talk and yet it still needs more attention of its mother and other members of the family.
In the field, tending operations include keeping the plant weeded, branch pruned, examined for disease attacks and keeping records of its increase in size in terms of girth and height. After the last branch pruning has been done, the plant, now grown to a “TREE”, it freed from close human attendance, as a child, grown up into a man, is set free to mix with the public.
Ii is an amazing story beginning with a small seed collected, sown, germinated, enlarged in size to be called a plant, growing bigger and taller to be called a tree. There-after it undergoes rotation after which the field man fells it and it is taken to the saw mill for timber production. If however, the tree is not meant to grow to timber size; it can be used during its early years as a building fencing, or electricity pole or fuel in terms of charcoal making.
This does not, in any case, end its life history. As a living thing, even if it was not used for timber or otherwise, time would come when it would dry-up, rot and finally convert into soil just like animals are born, grow, die and finally turn into the earth. And this is the story of life! GOD IS GREAT!
Leave a Reply