A Special Request to the Raspberry Row
The Honourable Harvest Week 3
As I create the guide called Sharing our Nature, meant to help people wanting to start their own seed libraries in Eastern Canada, I notice many overlapping movements converging towards a greater appreciation of our native plants. We are starting to recognize how much they feed our wildlife, but also make our life here possible. In this, there are principles we should all follow that were well-known by our ancestors, no matter where we come from. They happened to be well-put together by Robin Wall Kimmerer at page 180 of her book, Braiding Sweetgrass.
This weekly column, stretching into October, will tell of stories I have around those principles, and the way I see my own involvement in this societal shift. These principles are evidently meant to be lived, not solved with quick answers.
Past Articles Based on Principles
3rd principle of the Honourable Harvest : Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
I don’t know if it’s because we pruned them before they leafed out, but we have a seemingly never ending supply of raspberries in our collective garden this year.
We also have a family of mourning doves. I just learned they sometimes liked them too.
All this stands in a struggling part of town, many people here having to deal with addiction and resulting trauma. Though very tall, the raspberry row acts not as a wall but as a life-giving center to the garden. A thorny statement, but a delicious one.
Asking permission from a plant?
You might have asked yourself, seeing the principle this week : How do I ask permission from a plant?
But the more I read, and think about it, the more I realize there’s more to it than “asking” verbally.
Is that raspberry bush frail, or thriving? (For ours, I’d rather push towards the latter). The answer should be clear enough at a glance. But other things come after careful observation of the surroundings.
Does that dove family have everything it needs? Can it glean enough seeds from its environment?
I have personally made it my case that the choke cherry tree next to it is full of fruit, and they’re ripe at the same time as their neighbours, the berry-bearing prickly brambles. To me, if the birds need berries, they might like the juicier cherries even more. But who am I to know?
Red beacons in an ailing world
The gift given by the berry bushes is a great one. We might as well thank them for it.
All we did was plant some bare canes in the ground, and there go the berries.
“In a garden, food arises from partnership. If I don’t pick rocks and pull weeds, I’m not fulfilling my end of the bargain. […] But I can no more create a tomato or embroider a treillis in beans than turn lead into gold. That is the plants’ responsibility and their gift. Animating the inanimate. Now there is a gift.”
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 126
As I am pulling weeds, listening to the chapter called “Epiphany in the Beans”, a domestic dispute is heard in the background, threatening to escalate. We’re told by the people around that it’s none of our business.
An ever-patrolling officer eventually comes around the block and tells us all about the unsolvable, the too-late-to-do-anything-about-it situation of homelessness.
The gloomy world of hard drug abuse and resulting violence were likely created by years of neglect by successive systems, but we cannot blame one single factor for its cause. A transient people, especially one which is least fortunate, has trouble settling down and rooting themselves to place.
Thing is, if a person did decide to start picking up the pieces in their life, would they have a supportive environment to let them do it in? I heard from a homeless person once : “They kicked us out of the woods, now they’re kicking us out of the city”. But what if we gave them a place to feel safe? To feel at home?
The berries are going to wither, as every wild plant does every year. But the people are going to keep on living through the winter, if they’re lucky.
I love spring for its renewal and hope, but as the summer draws on, I have trouble bearing the torrid heat myself. Imagine being forced to be out there, with the pouring rain and all. Fall is great when the cool air comes, but the thoughts in my head are also kind of lukewarm. Just to think of all the ones needing to find shelter.
In the meantime, we have the berries to be happy for. Can’t argue with that. A special request to the Raspberry Row : keep on being you, and keep on giving us a red hint of sweetness in the heat of summer.
Have a great week and don’t forget to ask before taking! When observing plants for gathering, do you often take no for an answer?