It's funny how the biggest trees or plants aren't usually the most fruitful. My unscientific understanding is that so much energy gets used up in growing branches and leaves that not much is left for fruit. And, selfishly, we grow things for the fruit.
This peach tree, while impressive in size, basically produced nothing edible this year, or last year, as I've been told. So it got a hard pruning today to help it for next year. As I've pruned this late summer and autumn, I've thought about John 15:6, "If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned."
Of course there's some filling in that I've done since metaphors are only so helpful. If a branch is unfruitful - and even when plants are fruitful - they need to get pruned so that they will continue to produce. I used to interpret that verse as being really vindictive of God, almost like a threat. But now I understand it to be so necessary for the health of the other fruit and the tree as a whole.