When I was a child, our family often visited a man who had a wonderful garden. There were magnificent flowers, and the vegetables were bigger than what I'd seen anywhere else. What I remember most was the fruit trees. One plum tree had three different kinds of plums growing on it, and another tree had several kinds of pears, each with a different taste.
But most curious of all was a certain apple tree surrounded by a fence (so children wouldn't disturb it). That tree was very important to the gardener. He wanted it to bear all kinds of fruit. So he carefully grafted plum and apricot shoots into its main trunk. But they never grew. In fact, not only did these added shoots not bear fruit; leaves wouldn't even grow on them.
Undaunted, the gardener wouldn't give up his dream. He was determined that this apple tree should bear several kinds of fruit. He devised quite elaborate methods of supporting grafted shoots with slings. But always, these new shoots would die and fall off.
