Something to Ponder:

The Winter King Hawthorn, also known as the Green Hawthorn, is an unassuming tree that is slight of stature and is largely used as a colorful addition to larger landscapes. In the spring, white flowers appear and provide a powerful fragrance to the yard. In summer, its leaves move from a lighter shade of green to a deeper darker shade of green that make a lush canopy of serrated leaves. In the fall, its silver-gray bark peels revealing a copper-colored trunk. Also, red berries appear, and these berries last through the winter providing critical food for birds and other wildlife.

Further, the Winter King Hawthorn is largely disease resistant, pollution tolerant, long lived, a good producer of strong wood, and despite its name, virtually thorn-free!

Does your life have any resemblance to this tree? Willing to humbly not be the most prominent, in the background, consistently giving shade during the hotter and more difficult times of other peoples lives, and perhaps most critically, providing fruit in the cold when others have shut down or walked away?

The headlines always seem to belong to those who are first on the scene or make the greatest splash. Rarely is there a lot of publicity given to those that stick around, those that continue to provide nourishment long after the cameras have left. As you examine your life, are you providing fruit in the winter of someone’s life like the Winter King Hawthorn?

Learn More:

Hawthorn-Crataegus viridis ‘Winter King’, is a dense, rounded, deciduous tree with a broad spreading crown and silvery-green branches clad with lustrous dark green leaves. Unlike most hawthorns, this selection is mostly thornless, with only occasional small thorns. It is a popular, more disease-resistant cultivar that is noted for its profuse bloom of flowers, larger fruits, silvery-barked stems and more attractive fall color of purple and scarlet.