“… it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today.” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone p6.)

John and hi sisters, Jane and Kathy, with the wise old Hooty Owl, Siesta Key, FL, 1954

After my encounter with the Barred Owl yesterday, Iearned that at least two of our friends in the area had similar encounters with owls recently. Could it be that the wise old owls are telling us something? As readers of the Harry Potter books know, owls play a vital role in all seven books. A very different Harry Potter is our neighbor just a bit up the road, and it was that Harry Potter who sold us the land we call “Finley Lane.”

We live in an amazing world. A world of direct experience and imagination. Our imagination can trap us in fear, desire, disappointment. “What if it doesn’t rain this summer and the trees all die?” “What if it’s 20F during bloom?” “What if fire blight comes back?” So many things to fear. So many things to want or to disappoint. But our imagination can also set us free. As Sun Ra said (and I paraphrase), “We’ve tried the possible and it has failed. Now let’s try the impossible.” When we free up our thinking, we get to imagine how our orchards can flourish and thrive, how our trees can dance, and how we can dance with them.

When we focus on the experience of life, we get to notice that we are the miracle. Today I was at Yale University where I taught a group of students how to graft apple trees - only a few bandaids needed, and one quick trip to the local urgent care. (Those knives are sharp. Grafting is surgery, after all.) They all got a chance to experience the sharp knife and the green scion and to imagine climbing someday in their very own trees.