A persimmon tree takes every other year off. If last autumn the branches bent under the weight of it, this year there will be a scattering and no more. Korean has a word for that: 해거리, haegeori.
It is not laziness. A single persimmon costs the tree a great deal, and after a year of giving everything it spends the next one putting the roots and the trunk back. A year off is what makes another loaded year possible. The tree is keeping its own accounts.
Nobody used to scold a tree for it. This is its resting year, people would say, and let it be — a little extra manure, the long shoots thinned out, and after that nothing but waiting. They knew what a well-rested tree does the autumn after. So the resting is only half the tree's doing. The other half is somebody agreeing to wait.
Ours is resting this year. Through the thinned branches you can see straight up into the sky.