Berry Interesting!

Berry Interesting!   (May 09)
by Donna Mitchell-Moniak

Last year I started to cultivate a patch of wild raspberries at Spirit Fire. It’s a slow process--partly because of my physical handicaps and partly because it just is. It takes time to get to know plants, their needs and rhythms, their personalities, and the devas that live within them. There’s no doubt that the raspberries picked from the cultivated vines last summer were bigger, sweeter, and easier to harvest than those picked from other vines nearby. This April I began working with the same patch as last year.

“Ladies,” I said to them, “you will look marvelous when we are done!” The raspberry vines energetically responded with attention and interest. “Ladies, I need you to trust the process and trust together, because some will need to be cut completely so that others grow stronger and more beautiful.” I pulled up my chair like a hair stylist. “Now pull down your chi!”

The auric color of the raspberry vines changed as the chi-life force was pulled back from the prickly branches down to the main stem and root of each plant. Knowing which to prune and which to cut completely could be felt in my hands and heart once I started. Intuition, communication with the plant, and the obvious need of pathways for easier picking determined how much to cut and where. Each cut was both gentle and deliberate. I talked to the raspberries as I pruned.

“Ladies, you will feel so good! Your berries will be so sweet! And you will be the talk of the town!.” Half an hour later my body couldn’t do any more, so I sat among the plants that had been trimmed feeling their delight. While resting, I pinched extra sets of leaves off the branches now turned into main stems, the sets of leaves telling me which ones to nip and which should remain. Looking at the small patch done that day I said with truth, “Ladies, you look mmmarvelous!” They brightened with the compliment, and began to bring their chi back into the fullness of their new svelt selves.

Each day I’d go out and do a little more, then rake the dead leaf litter and create actual pathways where stones had been removed by John and Nick. Each day the ladies and I would converse. Each day they would delight.

Somehow, last year, when I first walked up to the patch with an eye to cultivate the wild berries I could feel feminine energy. I don’t question my intuition--it has served me too well over my lifetime, but I found it interesting. This year the same thing loud and clear: they were ladies. Who knew!

If I needed confirmation, I got it when I moved from the raspberry vines to the blackberry patch in another part of the yard. Holy mackerel! These guys were guys! The blackberry plants were straight and tall; the raspberries had been curved and bending. The blackberry plants had few side branches; the raspberry plants had many along the length of their curve. And the thorns of the blackberry plants were enormous compared to the narrow, slightly curved, but very sharp thorns of the female raspberry plants.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “Good day! I hope you will open yourselves to an experiment. It will make you more robust; it will concentrate your chi and make you stronger.” Their look was guarded as if raising unseen eyebrows, yet I could feel the beginnings of interest. “Will someone take the challenge and show the rest of the patch the benefits?” I waited respectfully. These blackberry plants were formidable; most of them were as tall or taller than I. My balance is not good on a good day, and if I fell into them, it would be “curtains.” And because of my physical handicaps, if I fell I would not be able to extricate myself by myself--I’d be cooked! After a pause, no plant showed any auric change to indicate readiness for the experiment of pruning nor was there any change in the devic sound of the patch. I called up my male energy. “Gentlemen, what say ye?”

Thankfully near the outer edge two plants turned slightly bluer in tone. The rich scarlet woody stem that stood energetically strong got softer. I thanked them for being first and brave. “Now you will be the strongest of them all. Your chi will go to make excellent heavy berries and make your stem stronger to support them.” Others in the patch began to sing “me too,” so I moved along. It was a slow process, much slower than with the ladies. The blackberry stems were Mars itself, hard, thick, scarlet red-green, and laden with thorns that sometimes pierced my thick leather gloves. They stood straight, unbending, unyielding except in their time and in their way. And the full-length stems that had fallen over the years lay long and prickly on the ground. They were like pointed armor barricading any entrance into the more vital parts of the thicket.

I could tell that my welcome was running out. “Okay, I hear you. Just a little more?” And I reached for one more top to cut and lost my balance. Praise God and the devas, I fell backward not forward. Backward meant that I would be able to navigate my way out; forward would have meant the unthinkable.

I apologized out loud before I even tried to get up. My legs don’t work well anymore. The muscles don’t get the neurological signals as they should. Because of the hill I was on, I knew there would be only one try at getting up and one attempt at not falling forward as I did so. I should have stopped when the blackberries told me to and when my body was saying the same thing. Just one more snip. They didn’t think so! I made it, but not without a few small scratches.

Of course, I went back to the “guys” a couple of days later. The ones that had been pruned looked great--robust, dynamic, trim--and the ones around them seemed to line up for pruning. They pulled their chi down as soon as them saw me! Now three weeks or so later, they are getting ready to flower as are the ladies. And it’s easy to see the improvement to the quality of the vines and stalks and the guaranteed yumminess of the berries to come. “Gentlemen, you look mmmarvelous!”