Blackberries

Yesterday while walking with friends through the off-leash dog park and on along the rails bordering the waterfront, we stopped and picked blackberries. Blackberries brought to this part of the country from overseas. Not the native variety, which grow close to the ground and have a berry the size of a child's thimble, but the fat blackberries the size of a an adult thimble. They were sweet and juicy, drippy. Eating them caused us to talk about picking blueberries—they are ripe now and easy to pick because they are abundant on the bushes. And then huckleberries, ripe soon in the mountains. My first husband and I would ride the Bridgestone from Hill's Resort at Priest Lake into the mountains and pick coffee cans full of berries. We could sell them to the resort for the pies they made for the customers. One woman who lived nearby and worked at the resort was the best pie baker of all the hired help—although I came in a close second. I could make a flaky crust as delicate as a grandmother's. I was only 20 at the time, or perhaps 19, as I married young.

A friend of mine said to me after I'd told her my parents had both been married four times, that they must have really believed in marriage. I thought about "believing" in marriage and decided it wasn't a belief, at least not a personal belief, like a belief in God, but a cultural more. You got married—and had a family. That is what you did. And when my mother was young, perhaps also 19, she was to have a marriage or what? live at the base with my grandmother and aunt and keep house, maybe bake pies while Grandpa was off being a Colonel or whatever he was. So marriage is like having a job, you just do it. It's an organizational solution for the population. And of course, a procreation solution.

In the garden, you can marry plants. They are called companion plants, marigolds alongside lettuce to keep away the slugs, onions next to tomatoes to keep away small flies, nasturiums next ot cabbage, potatoes and beans. For more about this subject see Carrots Love Tomatoes Another way to marry plants is to graft one plant to another. This can be done with fruit trees. I have never done it but studied closely the diagrams. I'm pretty sure that if I tried it, all I'd have is a wounded plant and a dead graft. Well perhaps a peruse through Grafting and Budding might help. And hopefully this isn't my secret view of marriage. I'm sure it's not. Marriage is a good thing. And I hope that someday I'll have a partner again. I like how partners can work together, support each other, care and concern is there, love. Well, not always, but ideally.

Best companion,
Flower