wild crab apples

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“Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.”
Henry David Thoreau, Wild Apples

I think that perhaps we are a lot like the wild apple—not all handsome nor perfect but instead rather gnarly, a bit disfigured, lumpy, bumpy, less than perfect…and yet, there is something thankfully redeeming in us all…..It would greatly behoove each of us to remember such when we look at those who we feel are full of imperfection, who appear “less than” in our eyes and who are a bit gruff and gnarly….as we all have our little imperfections–be they external or internal—

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(photographs: wild crab apple tree/ Troup County, Georgia / Julie Cook / 2013)