Day of the Triffids

“We should learn to enjoy our own company. Tell yourself cool stuff, about exciting things you’re going to do, about how you will turn your mistakes into victories, how the future will turn out just fine. If you don’t tell yourself positive stuff, who will?” Sereno Sky, “Lonely Traveller”

It’s a jungle out there.

No, really. It’s a jungle.

When we bought our home, it had a beautifully manicured and landscaped yard, and it had all the appearances of being relatively low-maintenance which, if anyone knows me, that’s a good thing.

My thumb is anything but green and I’ve been known to kill artificial plants with my tender loving care, so buying a home with a nice-looking yard was really an invitation to disaster, but we went for the gusto anyway.

Of course, we couldn’t do anything for a while when we were engaged in the process of negotiating for the purchase, jumping through hoops with the bank, and all that assorted nonsense. Then there was the month we had to wait to take occupancy because I was still heavily involved in that thing … Oh, gee, what was it called? Oh, right, work. I was still working then.

I always suspected work could interfere with life in the worse way possible, and this proved it.

I say that because when we finally got to our new home, the garden gnomes has transformed the yard significantly. In fact, one could say it was more terraformed than transformed. The bushes had all gone hippy on us with tangled leaves and branches flying in all directions; the grass had gone dormant while the dandelions had been busy making baby dandelions (proving walls don’t work, by the way, but that’s a subject for another column for some other time); and someone had apparently left their copy of Jumanji open as the blackberries had begun their efforts to turn our yard from something to look at to a Garden of Eatin’ – Holy Triffids, Batman!

For those who may not be all that familiar with the Pacific Northwest, Blackberries are an invasive species of deliciousness. As we toured the house and property back before even considering making an offer, our realtor pointed out these tiny baby creepers here and there and with a faint look of horror written on her face; she uttered words of grave concern through trembling lips in a prophetic Jeremiad: “Th … th … those are (dramatic pause) … Blackberries! You’re going to want to get rid of those as quickly as you can!!!”

Well, when it comes to gardens, although I am more horror-culturist that horticulturist, if there is one thing I know it is this: If I am going to spend time tending a garden, it darn-well better be producing something I can eat.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against beauty, flowers, and artistic arrangements (either outside or inside). Beauty has its place, but what good is it if you can’t run it past your taste buds?

Still, it seems there is a well-known story of a couple who lived in a garden who had a similar attitude about it, and they got kicked out as a consequence of their gluttony, greed, and idolatry. I may be slow on the uptake, but I’ve been known to catch the point of a story that’s been sharply told, and so Barb and I heeded the words of the oracle and began the process of cutting back and digging up all the little blackberry bushes that were trying to take root in our yard – as painful as it is (did I mention how thorny blackberry vines are?).

I know we will never truly eradicate the tentacled invaders as they wend their way through our yard here and there, but the upside of all this is that our neighbor’s vines are doing fine, and we’ve managed to collect some of the crop that is beginning to ripen along the fence – “The harvest is plentiful,” said Jesus. He was right.

I have also come to appreciate how carefully one must work to collect those black morsels of deliciosity from the fence-line. Over time, I have no doubt I will collect the scars of battle that come from this War of the Blackberry Brambles, but trust me: a blackberry cobbler’s got magical healing powers here in this, our valley.