Not Every Broken Branch Is Lost Progress

Loft Orchard Lessons - What Cherry Taught Us About Setbacks

By Cassie Higgins

Miss Cherry taught us something important this week here at the Loft Orchard.

When we brought her home, she was magnificent.

Tall.
Strong.
Overflowing with blooms.
Standing proudly above her trellis like she already knew exactly what she was becoming.

I loved her immediately.

The kids loved her too.

We couldn’t wait to see what kind of fruit she’d produce.

And then…
the wind knocked her over.

Two of her strongest branches bent hard against the side of the pot and never fully recovered after that.

Of course I immediately went into “save the plant” mode. 😂

I grabbed chapsticks, kid clips, braces — honestly whatever weird little tools I could find — and we propped her back up. And for a while it looked like it worked beautifully. She kept flowering. The stems stood tall again. She looked strong.

But then the next hot day came.

And underneath the heat, those branches wilted anyway.

So I told the kids:
“I think we have to clip them.”

And honestly?
That felt strangely sad.

Because my brain immediately interpreted the broken branches as:
lost progress.

Like somehow the plant had failed.
Or I had failed.
Or the growth had been interrupted.

But then I realized something while we were standing there looking at her:

Nature does not panic every time it loses a branch.

It adapts.

And most of the time…
what looks like damage eventually becomes part of the structure supporting future growth.

That broken branch?
Eventually it decomposes back into the system underneath the plant itself.

Nothing is wasted.

And humans struggle with this SO much.

We become deeply attached to visible production:
the blooms,
the fruit,
the progress,
the output,
the proof.

But nature seems much more invested in process than performance.

Miss Cherry is still growing.
Still adapting.
Still reaching toward the light.
Still producing life.

Just maybe not in the exact way I originally imagined.

And honestly?
That might be true for us too.

Some seasons are not about proving how much fruit we can bear.

Some seasons are about learning how to keep nourishing the system even after the weather bends us a little.

And maybe the things we think ruined our progress…
eventually become part of the structure underneath who we grow into next.

See you next time...

Cassie