A glorious warm spell in early March calls for an outdoor work day. Part of it was dedicated to clearing out the old plant debris that would become fuel for the flames in our fire pit. One of my favorite yard tasks. I’ve always liked the clean look of a weeded bed, the fun of pulling out dead dry bits from last fall and the exercise of raking out under plants. And so clearing out the raspberry canes has been a job I don’t mind. Todd and I take turns, just depends who’s home and has time. It’s pretty straightforward. Find the canes that are peeling and gray—the old ones—clip them as near to the ground as you can and pull them out. So much less cumbersome without leaves of fall. More comfortable in the cool of spring when it feels good to wear long sleeves still; they’re prickly and I’ve had battle wounds lasting throughout the week. But they remind me of my accomplishment, a badge of honor in a weird way.
As we often do when we’re working together in the yard, we notice the analogies and kind of smile to each other and ourselves that gardening and working the land is certainly not only about yields and harvests. Although we love that lesson too. As we work in our raspberries, we notice how the canes are like getting rid of old habits or parts of our lives that just aren’t productive any more. I’m more sentimental than Todd when it comes to our plants. I feel like we’re giving up on them when we do things like this. The same reason I hate thinning carrots and onions, how do you choose which ones get to stay and which ones are no longer needed? In my mind I want to keep them all. But I’ve been around raspberries and gardens long enough to understand the cycle, I can tell when it’s time to let some go.
I’ve felt that way with a few of my habits. Some of our activities. Weaknesses. Even an occasional friend. Some are easier to get rid of than others. Like a thin cane near the edge of the box. A silly habit comes to mind. I’d read Dear Abby with toast mostly every day of my life since I was a teenager. But last year I simply decided to spend those couple of minutes reading something else instead. Something a little better. Or, if my family was with me, just talk to them. I wasn’t learning much from it, some of it was disturbing, most of it I couldn’t relate to. I could just tell it was a habit that needed to be relegated to the burn pile. That cane was near the edge of the box, so I hardly felt a scratch or have taken a glance back. This is my favorite kind. An easy tweak that provides space to stretch.
But others, like the woody cane in the middle, surrounded by other prickly stems, are tough. Sometimes I skirt around them, ignoring them till next time. But in the back of my mind I know they need to go. It takes me awhile to muster the courage to cut some of these things out of my life, and I still haven’t gotten to them all, but I know where most of them are. These are things like a boyfriend or job or major you know just isn’t going to work out. Too many commitments that you love but knowing in your heart there isn’t enough gardener to go around. Admitting the box is only this big. It’s knowing this is not really a sacrifice, but rather an investment, that will produce a greater yield in the future.
Weaknesses are hard. They seem embedded with roots so deep that I end up wrestling with them. I’ll even take a break and come back sometimes. And of course they’re the ones right in the middle, painful to remove. But this is where I’ve had the most experience. I’d like to level the residual stump so I don’t have to think about it when I look at our raspberry patch up close. But, for good or for bad, it’s a reminder of what used to grow there. And so it’s not hard for me to acknowledge that jealousy and insecurity and gossip and unkindness have lived in my patch. I can still see their little stumps. And every now and then I wonder if I really did pluck them after all. I sometimes think I see something growing in a spot I thought I'd cleared.
I know the job will never be entirely done. A pity. And a blessing. This task isn’t like planting or removing a tree, building a garden box or fence, or putting in bulbs or a trellis. Some kind of project that stays done. We feel like we’re doing it all the time. Like I said, it takes some mental effort on my part to pull the canes up; they were producing beautiful berries last summer. It’s hard for me to admit that it’s not working any more. An old habit that we derived some kind of thrill from, a relationship that really isn’t thriving any more, a weakness that is so engrained in us but isn’t producing any good fruit. These are the canes we need to take a look at. It's time.
Last year our harvest was a wash. And I think people have years like that. I certainly mourn what could’ve been, I think we all do. I missed the early mornings and darkening evenings with Todd and the kids picking berries. I missed making jam and raspberry pies. Of course I did. But I guess it gave us time to do other things. We had more time for walks and games, more time to spend on the other plants. Same with an illness or losing a special loved one, you can hardly believe it’s happening to you. But even with the down days of last year, it was nice to know people cared, to have visitors, to be able to slow down and assess what really matters. Even in our disappointments, there seems to be compensation.
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