Brambles: The Unkindest Cut

Today was a beautiful day. After several days of rain, it was nice to go out in my garden and juggle and weed. In that order. Because as I juggled, I couldn't help but notice how healthy the plantains looked, spreading their large leaves across the lawn. I pulled out one. The still damp earth gave it to me roots and all. Any gardener knows how gratifying it is to pull a weed and have it come out with all of its roots. Which means you need to pull another. And another. Who needs drugs and alcohol with this kind of high?

Later I noticed the vines on our blackberry brambles. I think they are morning glory vines, but they are a bit more aggressive and their roots run very deep. Definitely not as gratifying to pull up, but if I don't make the attempt they shade out a lot of my plants and I lose fruit and flowers. So I started unwinding and pulling, trying not to loosen the pale berries that were forming.

Blackberry brambles don't seem to understand when you are trying to help them. For yanking out the vines, I have an armful of scratches. I feel like I was attacked by a pack of cats with razor sharp claws. Which would be possible around here, but they are not to blame today.

Why do I give my sweat and blood to my garden?

That's why.

Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.
~Mary Catherine Bateson

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we only will tune in.
~George Washington Carver

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
~E. E. Cummings