We push back Himalayan blackberry regrowth in preparation for layered mulching. Forsythia and boxwood are trimmed, salmonberry and elderberry discovered under weeping brambles of blackberry. The weed wrench takes a stellar turn at pulling up bamboo, ferns are liberated from canes that have been hiding in their fronds. Ivy is pulled, knotweed surveyed, trash in the creek contemplated. So much is in our care.
Siblings, friends, a candidate, people young through middle age. More English hawthorn comes down, we reclaim ground from blackberry grow back. Humans walk through. Dogs walk through. Blackberries are plucked from cut brambles, wheelbarrows are loaded with root balls and branches, tender attention is payed to native trailing blackberry. We fill one small patch of earth with love.
New elders, teens known and new to each other, all new to me. You trickle in, each of you right on time, growing us from six to twenty at our peak. We disentangle layers of black plastic sheeting from roots, wrestle blackberry canes from a conifer and elderberry, activate the pungent sent of Herb Robert as we pull it from the ground. Goats arrive, stunning slot-pupilled eyes pulling us from shade to sun. Our happiness increases by 50%. In the end, reed canary grass stands tall, thistles sharp, there is a sea of blackberry before us, but there is only discernment, no discouragement. This is the work before us. We gather to connect before falling away to rest so that we may return again, over and over, for as long as it takes.
You send your heartbeat 100 feet. Water sloshes from pails. You smile, your gaze steady, encouraging. I pull out tiny English hawthorn, ferret out fast-growing black locust hiding in the shade of towering cottonwoods, dig a horse chestnut on the verge of adolescence. We bear the heat and sun for the good of our first native plantings. There is refuge in the shade and in being with you.
Nature is all around us.
Cleaver seeds ride along. English hawthorn fall. You point out the musical clatter of dry canes and sticks as they rake across the ground. Now I delight in it, too.
I made a mistake. And you made it work out anyway. Thank you, thank you for the grace.
A song for you.
Love matters.
