Monday, May 11, 2009

Pruning Raspberries

Masanobu Fukoaka writes in One Straw Revolution that farmers should take time each night to write poetry. I was thinking about that yesterday as I was cleaning the old canes out of the raspberry patch. There is so much to be learned from interacting with the garden that is worthy of being remembered and resonates far beyond the little patch of ground in my backyard. What does pruning the raspberries tell us about life I wonder as I roughly pull up the tiny plants that have dared to grow outside my designated patch? At what point are we no longer useful I muse as my shears cut through the dead wood of last year's fruitful stock? My heart breaks just a little bit when I mistake a new cane for an old one and must toss that green stock onto the rubbish heap. Then I slow down and try to be more careful, deliberate about each stock I cut. What makes the old so different from the new? The colour of the cane can be darker or lighter, the thin bark cracking and peeling away...but not always. I check for green buds waiting to burst...but some stocks are well behind the others and are not so obvious. Then I see that the new canes have no branches...nothing reaching away to the stem to create a treelike skeleton.

In that moment I see my own life a little differently. In the years before my children came I shot up straight, with a singular purpose, as tall as I could be. But now my children have caused me to reach away from my narrow stock out into the world. "Go out in the world, be fruitful and multiply." I have been a fruitful plant, as I watch my little raspberries playing in the dirt, pretending they too are gardeners. They draw me out into the world in many unexpected ways, and I extend my life and time into many places hoping that my energy and love will somehow come back through the world to embrace them. I look at the dried up old canes with their brittle limbs extending out and I thank them for the fruit they gave me, the jam that was so beautiful on my toast all winter, the berries that livened up my yogurt. I thank them for the beautiful green foliage that made my garden seem so wild and free last summer and for the summer promise that still lies within my patch. And in that moment of joyous gratitude I feel that somehow I have honoured myself.