Thistles and Silverlinings

It’s funny what you can find when you’re looking for something else.

Nearly three years ago, a fierce August windstorm leveled many trees here, ours included. Though devastating at first, we quickly enlisted a logger and a dozer operator to clear the property around the house. Since then, we have had more grass and fewer trees, but subtler changes have only recently become evident. For example, the pond is less shaded now, and the increased sunlight has led to rampant growth.

In the past weeks, I monitored musk thistle’s progress on the pond bank from afar—a tall, beautiful but extremely thorny, non-native invasive plant. The Missouri Department of Conservation says a single plant can produce 11,000 seeds, spread by silky parachutes. In fact, they feel so strongly about it that they require landowners to control it, with a fine as an added incentive. 

I planned to dig up the two or three plants I saw before their flowers went to seed, but the ground was dry, the days were busy, and I looked forward to the task about as much as, say, trimming a bobcat’s claws. It’s easy to postpone something like that. Then, a soaking rain left me with no excuse. On a recent morning, I suited up in Don’s Vietnam-era flight suit, sprayed with permethrin, pulled on rubber boots, donned heavy fireplace gloves, and waded into the weeds, ready to deal with thistles, ticks, chiggers, snakes, and cougars. The two or three plants I thought were there turned out to be two dozen plants. Unfortunately, while I was procrastinating, two of the flowers had already headed out, but that morning they were still wet with dew, and I was able to bag most of the seeds. When the few remaining seeds lifted on the breeze, I leaped for them in my ungainly flight-suit and rubber-boot ballet, grateful not to have an audience. But I didn’t like to contemplate the numbers. Say 20 seeds got away. If only half of them mature, the next generation could produce 110,000 seeds because of my delay. When will I ever learn?

Despite this, my Saturday excursion had a silver lining. The tall thistles advertised their location, and a new blackberry patch was hidden beside them. Our last berries vanished 30 years ago, so it’s sweet to see them again. They are small, hard, and glossy red now, and if all goes well in the next few weeks, I'll help them find their way into a pie. I owe it to the thistles.

Blackberry Dreams

Prison and Pie

After weeks of hot, muggy weather, dry, cool days this week have been a refreshing change. This morning before work I picked wild blackberries in a jungly patch not far from home. A light dew covered the plants, and the only sounds besides birdsongs were my squeals when I tangled with the thorns. Don has a flight suit he traded with a Navy pilot for a pair of jungle boots before he left Viet Nam; now it's consigned to our berry picking forays, and it works pretty well. Last night I sprayed it thoroughly with bug spray, so when I waded into the brush this morning, I didn't have to worry about chiggers. Too bad they don't make a spray for blackberry thorns. By afternoon, embedded thorns and little cuts on the backs of my hands started to cry for attention, and I slathered them with liquid bandage. Other than that, I came out unscathed, and I have at least enough berries for one pie.  

I grew up on the Northern California coast, just south of the Oregon border. The sign at the edge of town read, Fort Dick, Population 500. Just beyond the sign were miles of land overgrown with brambles. My brother and I spent what seemed at the time like way too many Saturday mornings picking those tiny wild sweet blackberries. Even in the summer, the mornings were cool there, and we breathed in the salt air, but we hated the drudgery and the punishing stickers. Of course, Mom told us that if we wanted any of her pies or jam, we had to pick, and the incentive was just too compelling.  We were pretty sure that Mom made the best blackberry pies in Del Norte County.  

That was a long time ago, and now a federal prison now sits right over that great berry patch. But whenever I pick blackberries, in my mind's eye, I'm back in California, and that entire prison is replaced by 2 kids filling up their pails and dreaming of blackberry pie.