My Deep-Purple Opportunity

A few years back, my neighbor told me I had sticker bushes poking through the fence. I trimmed anything that could get in his way, and then had to wait a couple weeks before I had my golden opportunity. Or, should I say, my deep-purple opportunity. Because those weren't sticker bushes any more than rose bushes are sticker bushes. They were blackberry bushes, and before long they were hanging heavy with hundreds of plump, mouth-puckering berries.

"Here," I said, handing him a plate of homemade blackberry bars over the fence. "They are from those sticker bushes."

A smile crept across his face like the one when the Grinch's heart grows three sizes.

And now, once again, right on schedule here in June, the blackberries are ripe for picking. I never planted them, you know. The birds did. And such a lovely job they did. The blackberry canes are interspersed throughout a row of low-growing juniper bushes that edge my kitchen garden, perfectly positioned as if some master planner had intended it.

All day long the mockingbirds visit the bushes, their gray and white tails tipped upwards as they dip their beaks down the blackberry canes, searching for just the right berry. I told my family that I wasn't sure how many berries we'd get this year, what with the birds keeping constant vigil there, and one of my children, in her infinite wisdom, said "Well, it's not like they're yours, Mom. You're not the one who planted them."

And so I am grateful for the handful I pick for morning yogurt or afternoon smoothies or for tossing on top of vanilla ice cream. I hope I can pick enough to freeze, like last year, so I have them in October, when June is already a far away memory. But most of all, I hope I can pick enough for blackberry bars, to make my neighbor smile at the miracle of nature once again.