kontextmaschine:

Ugh, nothing like taking 3 years nursing a shoot to fill in and patch a bare spot in the canopy only to realize that’s such a rich vein of sunlight it’s going to develop into a major branch that totally throws off the tree’s balance so you have to cut it off

On the up side I did use that one to learn about timing the trimming of shoots, that if you let them branch as much as they want during the growing season all those leaves generate carbon to make the main shaft thicker, and then with fall the tree sucks energy down to store in the roots, in winter you trim it down to the terminus you want to grow from, and then in spring when the tree pumps energy back to the branches that bud gets near the entire energy budget pumped up that shaft