In 2023 I discovered quite unexpectedly, that I had morphed into a childhood memory that every adult seems to have of a neighborhood curmudgeon. One minute I was seeding and tending to wild flowers for the neighborhood's inhabitants to enjoy and the next, I was admonishing a family for gathering them in. I never wanted to be that person, my Mrs... what was her name again? The one who would spray us with her garden hose while warning our parents "would be awfully upset that we had gotten so very wet." Ahh but didn't we tease her just a bit with a game of we dare you to?
As I grow older, these memories of my five year old self, tug at my sleeve like wild blackberries growing along the edges of farm fields. Isn't it odd I wonder, now just shy of my 60th birthday, how we forget the importance of choosing blackberries over roses?
I hadn't always thought about blackberries with their snags and long scratches. It was Wayne upon moving to our first home in Hinsdale, who decided that we should allow for a patch of his childhood memories with his grandmother to remain in a what had seemingly been an acre of hopeless bramble. I grew to love that patch with its fragrant white flowers, even as it reached out to snatch at my hair when I drove the lawnmower past. I hadn't known it yet, but allowing for and providing for something to remain is the taproot of conservation.
Yes, where were we now? Curmudgeon, that's right. It was after I was not so neighborly and Wayne had given me a fair amount of space, that Wayne reminded me of a time when we were dating that he had stopped by the side of the road between BF and Westminster to pick me a bouquet of wildflowers. Why hadn't the farmer been aggravated by my picking his blackberries? Hadn't the farmer made a plan for them? Why did our neighbor spray us for walking on her lawn? The very next time I ran into those children, we all apologized and I confessed my embarrassment at my behavior.
I was super excited to share this find with Seth who spends a great deal of time scouting for wildlife here in Vernon. Seth's response, "I'm not surprised." That's okay Seth, your day will come.
I wish for Vernon in the new year and into all the years to come, a year of blackberries...No not quite, my resolution goes something like this: Only a few short weeks after my curmudgeon mistake, another group of almost teenage girls came by and greeted me as I was pruning back the very same wildflowers. I offered to let them cut their own bouquets from anywhere in my yard and handed over my pruners. When one of the girls came to return the pruners, they expressed to me a thank you and let me know that they were going to "place them on my grandmother's"...that's when her words failed her. I offered her the words she was was trying to find, "final resting place." She nodded and thanked me again. And so my dear Vernon, my resolution is to help replenish this town in such a way that it is filled with wild blackberries. -Norma Manning
