5x7 print, 8x10 white mat included, packaged in clear plastic protective sleeve. (Frame not included.)

“I chanced/A goodly tree far distant to behold/Loaden with fruit of fairest colours mixed/ Ruddy and gold.” –John Milton

Along the edges of old homesteads and pastureland, you’ll occasionally stumble across an apple tree (Malus domestica) with unfamiliar fruit. They’re apples all right, but different somehow. More than likely you’ve found an heirloom variety—a type of apple that, for all intents and purposes was “lost.” When a grower finds an heirloom variety, she’ll cut a slip from the tree, a scion, to graft onto a root to preserve it from extinction.

Heirloom apple trees reminds us that even though humility once seemed lost, The Grower took a scion and made it flourish once more. The prophet Isaiah describes Jesus’ coming this way: “ There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”

The pure, sweet fruit of humility.