The dinner dishes on the counter would have to wait. Recent events made me feel desperate for my raspberry garden. Two yellow Labradors knocked me off balance as I bent to pick up my pail outside the back door and descended the steps into the expanse of grass. The dogs rolled and tumbled across the yard right up to the garden gate. They stopped short, knowing the place was off limits.

Lifting the latch, I entered, conscious of birds arguing and a breeze rustling trees nearby. Although the sun hung only a few handbreadths above the horizon, bees still droned in and out, over the fence. There were no walls and despite the sounds of nature, it was my soundproof booth where I was no longer conscious of much beyond the confines of the garden. I needed to think.

The raspberry plants stood silently, some tall and straight, some leaning against the fence rail. A few bowed slightly from the weight of other plants entangling themselves for support. One or two lay upon the ground in their last season. I surveyed the ground. Something had happened there. Raspberries splattered the dirt like great drops of blood. It was the birds once again.

In spite of the fact I routinely fled to my garden to find solace from the day’s crisis, the place often seemed itself to be a battleground, reflective of what drove me there to start. The upset that had happened that day didn’t matter so much as the reminder I knew I’d find in my raspberry patch to help me through it. I thought back to it’s groundbreaking and considered how it had never ceased to provide me apt pictures seemingly drawn by the same one who’d also put his teachings into multi-layered parables when he walked the earth.

Continue reading “Raspberry Wars, Part One: Healing”