What the Apple Tree Did in The Alchemical Garden

My apple tree was magnificent this year.

She was enormous, green and full, with apples everywhere. Looking at the photograph now, she seems almost the very picture of abundance.

But the photograph does not tell the whole story.

Almost eighty per cent of the apples were rotten inside or worm-eaten.

I threw so many apples beneath the hedges to rot that it hurt me to see the waste. And with many of the apples I did keep, I spent time cutting away the bad parts so that I could save what was still good and make apple juice and apple porridge.

There seemed to be so much.

And yet so much of it could not nourish anyone.

That was why I decided the tree needed trimming. I wanted more air and more light to reach her, especially into the middle where she had become so dense.

Kasper, who was once married to my neighbour Liv and has remained her friend, offered to do the trimming. Liv's father, Michael, helped him. They did not only cut the tree. They gathered all those branches and pulled them to the container for garden waste. This was Sunday 4th Oct.2026.

When I went to The Alchemical Garden on Tuesday, I rushed to see her.

I was delighted.

She wasn't.

“I am quite annoyed,” she seemed to tell me. “I am not as pretty as I was before.”

I looked at her.

She had a point. 😂

She really had been glorious.

Then came something else:

“But I know I will receive more light now—even in autumn.”

Yes.

Perhaps next year she will give fewer apples. I don't know. Perhaps they will be healthier. I don't know that either.

We will see.

But there was something else going on for me around that apple tree.

I felt bad that Michael had done so much work, especially when I realised that he had also helped pull all those branches away.

I would have preferred to pay Kasper. He said no. Instead, Michael told me that Kasper had told him that, instead of being paid, he'd rather I kept being kind to Liv.

That answer stayed with me.

I posted the photograph of my newly trimmed tree on Facebook and wrote about how difficult I had found simply receiving their help.

Are you better at giving than receiving?

The responses came.

One woman told me that she had been brought up to be fiercely independent because her mother was repeatedly ill. Even now, when she is partially paralysed, accepting help is difficult.

Another woman said she is grateful when people help her, but finds it very difficult to ask. When someone does help, she likes to give them perfume or oils in exchange. Otherwise she feels that she “owes” them something.

I understood that feeling.

Then a friend in Malaysia came along with a completely different response.

Why feel bad? Be thankful someone was sent to help you. And if you cannot eat all the apples, share them.

😂

Then Mel Hancock wrote:

“You told me about the green field in giving and receiving.”

Oh dear.

I had forgotten my own words.

For years I have sometimes used a very simple image:

💛 + 💙 = 💚

The Green Field, where giving and receiving are the same energy.

Mel had once been someone I worked with. Now she was giving my own words back to me.

And somewhere between Kasper saying, “Just continue being kind to Liv,” my Malaysian friend telling me to share the apples, and Mel reminding me about the Green Field, something shifted for me.

I had been thinking about receiving as though it required repayment.

You do something for me.
I do something for you.

Then we are even.

But that was not what Kasper was asking for at all.

He gave something to me and asked that something continue towards Liv.

My Malaysian friend didn't say, Pay Michael back.

She said, Share the apples.

And I found myself wondering:

What if true prosperity is not about repayment at all, but circulation?

What if the return does not always have to go back to where the gift came from?

Perhaps it can keep moving.

I am still sitting with that.

And then I look again at the old photograph of my apple tree in all her glory.

So much fruit. So much apparent abundance.

And I remember all those apples lying beneath the hedge because there was nothing else I could do with them.

I find myself asking another question:

What is abundance when so much of it is wasted?

I don't have an answer.

But perhaps my apple tree and I are both learning something about prosperity.

I am learning that I may be able to receive without immediately having to repay.

She is learning to live with fewer branches and considerably less glamour. 😂

Today I asked her again, what she thought about her new appearance.

She was still annoyed.

“I am not as pretty as I was before.”

Then she reminded me:

“But I will receive more light now—even in autumn.”

And for now, I think I will leave it there. 🌳🍎