Culling the Raspberry Canes

I have been using this time of staying at home to work in the garden.  I am a poor fall clean up person but I love spring cleaning in the garden once the weather is warmer.  There is something magical about raking brown oak leaves off of the garden and finding new green shoots hidden below.  It is like opening a Christmas present.  Sometimes, I like to get down on my hands and knees and see what is emerging from up close.  I don’t remember where I have planted everything so it is like a wonderful surprise every spring.  I recognize the shoots of crocus, tulip and iris but other things require patience and daily checking to discover what gift is rising up to greet me.

One of the things I really enjoy is cleaning up the raspberry patches.  Raspberries have canes that grew last year which will produce fruit this fall and canes that produced fruit last year and are now dead.  Cleaning out the dead ones makes room for new shoots to emerge this year which will fruit next year.  It is slow work as each cane needs to be examined for life, in the form of tiny leaf buds beginning to show.  The dead canes break off fairly easily and then they need to be piled up and taken away.  All this time, the thorns on the canes grab at my mittens, coat and hat.  The occasional scratch is inevitable.  For some reason, I find this job very satisfying (as opposed to spring cleaning the house which so far I have avoided).  And this year, culling the raspberry canes became more important than ever. 

I imagined making similar choices in my life.  Which habits, patterns, or things no longer bear fruit?  How will there be space to create, to grow new habits and patterns if the ground is all crowded in?  None of us will be the same after this event.  However, the more conscious we are about what aspects of our lives that we want to carry forward, the better.  Some things just won’t seem so important after living through this time and those canes will easily fall away.  Others may need to be broken off more consciously. 

I am taking part in a number of free on-line courses that are being offered to help people get through this time as well as becoming more conscious about their lives.  I hear many of the instructors speak about anxiety.  I am using this time to find better ways of dealing with anxiety.  On an on-line webinar, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron suggested that we could get better at being with uncertainty during this time. I have heard much of this before but I was too busy to practice it.  Now, I have an abundance of time and lots of free floating anxiety to work with.  Sounds like some expensive retreat!  Whatever I learn during this time will be kept in my reservoir of resiliency and it will serve me well in the future.

The canes of community will be kept.  I have participated in a number of Zoom calls with family, a comedy night and a musical open mic with friends.  How wonderful it is to see the faces of people I know and love.  I feel stronger, less alone, more able to cope.  I sleep better.  I suspect that we need to build even stronger communities.  Before this event, I was too overwhelmed to even try a Zoom call.  It turns out that they are ridiculously easy once one is motivated by isolation.

Paying attention to where I actually am and being in the moment is another thing that I am consciously practicing (at times).  One evening, my partner and I were walking by the lake and I was in my head trying to process another piece of the “news”.   Suddenly, my partner gestured to look up.  High above us were 25 Turkey Vultures riding the west wind coming off of the lake.  We had noticed a few that had migrated back to our shores earlier in the week, but here they were all together, gracefully soaring.  Some Indigenous people call them Peace Eagles because they eat things that are dead and clean up the environment. This reminded me of clearing up the raspberry patch.  Watching them soar and defy gravity by understanding how to use the wind, lifted my heart.  After cleaning up Earth, they take to the skies and fly with their community apparently to reconnect before roosting for the night or maybe because it feels good.  I don't know for sure but it seems like a celebration to me and I joined in the feeling of community celebration.  They became part of my community in that moment.

I am looking carefully at anything green that comes up, for wild edibles.  I have noticed for the first time that Motherwort seems to be one of the first plants to appear.  It is possible to make a remedy for anxiety with the fresh leaves.  I feel Mother Earth reaching out to us when I see the Motherwort leaves.   Earlier this week, while walking by a forest, I noticed a lot of heart shaped serrated green leaves close to the forest floor.  I picked one and rubbed it in my fingers.  It smelled slightly like onion or garlic.  Perhaps the Garlic Mustard plants are appearing.  The early settlers brought these plants from Europe to eat.  However, they escaped and we don’t eat them anymore so they are now invasive and fairly abundant if you know where to look.  Last spring, I found a place where they come up near my home.  I waited for the flowers to blossom to positively identify them.  However, they are best eaten before they flower.  This year, I will recognize them and pick them to cook and eat.  I love to eat the first greens of the year; dandelion, plantain, nettles, early shoots of day lilies.  I crave green and it is a spring ritual for me.  This year, they seem safer than lettuce in the grocery store.  Growing and eating wild food is something I will definitely carry after this time.  Eating fast food may not make it through however.  In these quiet days, I have enjoyed eating more slowly, savouring the flavours and being more grateful for it.

It is surprising what people leave on the side of a trail

We have been walking a 30 km trail in pieces.  There are barely any other people out there and walking is good for the body, mind and emotions.  My partner carries a garbage bag and picks up the garbage that snowmobilers left this winter.  After a week or so, we have filled up two recycling bins with cans and bottles left on the trail side.  It feels like a way to show respect for Earth.  And Earth has rewarded us with the sight of a doe crossing the road, a Turkey Vulture eating at the side of another road, and the sound of a large group of Green Frogs calling from a vernal pool.   Last night we were regaled by a chorus of Spring Peepers in a vernal pool by a different trail.  We stood and soaked it in.  Live music will stay on the list.

Look carefully on the left bank for the female Mallard
 who is well camouflaged.

This morning we walked slowly past two pairs of Mallard Ducks setting up nesting sites. Lovely purple Croci are flowering in the garden. The beautiful sound of small waterfalls as the runoff continues, the sun warming our backs, the smell of the soil warming up, the buds beckoning from tree branches and the sound of birdsong from the trees all delight and allow our hearts to soften, our lungs to breath in a bit more deeply and our bodies to relax.  Paying attention and being present is something I want to keep.

It doesn’t seem to make sense to just hold our breath and wait for this all to pass so we can go back to business as usual.  The more that we can adapt and learn, the better it will be for us and for our world.  We are rewriting our story here, and the more conscious we can be about what we want to midwife into being and what we want to help fall away, the better.

Oh and I will definitely be keeping my love of pussywillows!

This sight made my heart sing!