As I was gardening and communing in the yard where I live, I opened up to tree who lives here too. It's in the lower garden above the green belt, and provides the shade through summer for the new hidden garden there. It's branches reach high and then spread and drop almost to the ground, forming an umbrella of shade beneath thats perfect for rhododendron's, azalea's, hasta's and any shade loving plants. It's down a narrow winding path that looks like a game trail more than a foot path, and so no one really goes there except me.

The tree is some kind of false plum, and while it doesn't produce any fruit, it's completely covered in delicate white flowers during the spring when the plums and cherries are also blooming. When it happens it's a gift, a few weeks of amazement and beauty capable of shaking people up, and waking people up the the value and beauty of nature. Now that I think of that, and while the tree is all green leaves now, it would be a great time to talk to people about the person-hood of the tree, when it's gifts of beautiful expression are literally in full bloom.
I was talking to it, telling it my wish to prune it in certain places to improve my view of the lower flower garden from the deck off the back of my apartment. It was really asking to shape the tree to give me more access to beauty, and I didn't need it for food or any survival type of need. I felt a little nervous about asking permission to be a creating sculpture with the living space around me. I think it's valuable for awakening a sense of beauty in those human persons who live there and have trouble seeing the beauty in chaotic growth. I feel like if they can appreciate the beauty of the landscape they'll behave differently towards it, see it more deeply, and hopefully relate to it with more consciousness and courtesy. I also love to work together with the living scape as a partner by gently shaping it.

I've spent most of my time in the city it's shaped in many ways how I relate to and perceive the greenscape. I'm aware of that, and while it's growing and changing, that background of gardener as opposed to grower of foods and other types of harvesting for living is still new to me.
Anyway, I say all that as a little bit of history so that you understand my development has a starting place, and a certain limited perspective.

So I asked the tree. I included the context the way I've explained it to you, and listened... The first impression I had was to look more closely at the tree. I found myself looking carefully at the shape of the leaves and mostly looking at the pattern of the bark on the trunk and branches.
I took this to mean that I needed to know the tree better by seeing and feeling, and know it less as an idea or object to think about. To see it less as something that needed something done about it, and more as an already person doing it's thing.
A certain amount of embarrassment always accompanies the realization of my previously limited perspective when the new way is presented, especially when it's coming form a person I thought of as an ornament before then. :) Nothing to be done about that except to change and carry on. After looking carefully and closely and relating my wish I got a quiet impression of acceptance, but a conditional acceptance. I knelt beneath the tree while listening, my hands on the ground and my head bowed. It happened that way without thinking about it. When I understood and agreed, a little surge happened, and from my hands a drop turned into a circular wave, kind of like the way a drop of water makes a small splash and then concentric circles move out from the center, only upside down. My impession was of having seen a tone, like a bell would make, travel down and out from the point of our understanding and agreement. Something happened between us that moved into it all somehow. It felt like a prayer. I wanted to do it again, but didn't want to be frivolous with it like it was a new toy. It was something I realized I could do on my own, to bounce my intention into the all, but it was different when it was in relationship with the living green and bounced into the earth, in a specific place and signifying a specific agreement, or understanding.

The tree asked, (I received impressions that felt like a request) and I said alright and agreed. It asked that each branch, no matter how big or small, be carried down to the place where I was putting them individually. It seemed inefficient and it was going to take a lot of time to do it that way, as opposed to cutting them all and making a pile and carrying the whole pile in a few trips. Along with asking before each cut and listening to confirm it was alright, I carried the branches slowly down to the hillside spot they were going to.
Then I stopped. I quit honoring that request because it was taking to long and I have so much else to do that I don't really have time to go so slow. This happens in ceremony too. I get a specific request and then at some point in the process of carrying it out I do something else. I do what I want to do. It always turns into a lesson about listening, about listening and considering more deeply what I'm hearing. When I do, new layers of meaning unfold at deeper and more encompassing levels of relationship. I made aware when I don't of the excuses I make for not doing so, and this teaches me about what attitudes hold me back from the depths of understanding, and I'm embarrassed and grateful at the same time.

The lesson the tree taught me was that each leaf is an event, each branch more so, and that each one took time and effort and had a reason for being. Going slow would honor each event and the importance of each act of being that made up this tree. It would help me become aware that the tree was aware and invested in each movement of it's expression. It wasn't like every cell was a spectacular event, but maybe that's because I gave up on going slowly. Maybe there is a depth I didn't get to because I was "busy".

I apologized to the tree by writing this today, and to make amends I'm going now down into the garden to kneel and listen and explain my sorrow for not listening as good as I could have before. If I'm lucky the tree will hear my sincerity and understand that I've learned, and maybe we can send a water tone prayer together into this place, where it grows, and where I'm growing too.