Mary Jane, Raspberries, and Trying to Be a Good Human

I haven’t written in a bit because it’s on right now for spring planting and preparation. I will have to write more about this soon, but Ron has had some health struggles related to his round with COVID. Tests are ongoing, and I am hopeful all will be well; however, he’s been moving slower than before, which means he needs more help to get the epic tasks of spring completed.

Last week, my task was to prune all the fruit trees and bushes. Pruning the blueberries is easy. Pruning the raspberries is tough because, as you know, raspberry bushes are prickly and mean. I have learned to wear a thick coat and thick gloves, but they still attack my hair. Sometimes, I just end up stuck. During harvest in June and July, I always wish for more raspberry bushes, but when I am pruning, I am thankful we have just about a 25-foot row. The whole process is normally very frustrating to me, but it wasn’t too bad this year because I had good company.

Mary Jane loves raspberries more than I can express. She has two favorite foods that I have discovered–raspberries and oatmeal with raisins. Come to think of it, maybe it’s just raisins, but raspberries are her joy every summer.

She is doing pretty well despite her very old age and meat bird DNA. If she makes it to age 7, which happens in just three weeks, I’m convinced she has to be close to a record for a Freedom Ranger meat bird. I mean, she’s definitely showing her age, and I think surely she won’t make it through a long, hot summer. However, we switched feed to some awesome organic feed I found from Vermont, and it seems to have given her an extra little boost. It’s really good food, and Mary Jane has a really strong will to live, which, if you follow this blog, you know so well. It seems like a hopeful combination. Mary Jane will turn 7 on June 1.

Anyway, I was down on the ground fighting through the prickly branches to get to the back side of our row of when I saw Mary Jane watching me so hopefully.

“Oh, baby, I have no raspberries yet,” I told her. “But I’m doing this, so you can have some soon.”

And it was exactly that thought that made me feel less grumpy about all of the raspberry bush attacks on my hair. Seeing that hopeful face reminded me that there is joy coming. There is some pain now. My hair was pulled about a million times, and I was sweating like crazy on the hot day wearing my coat and gloves, and oh my gosh my poor back–but the reward is coming. Mary Jane reminded me of that, and she made me think about my place in the world.

Last week, I also had the chance to see a beautiful symphony performed by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. The symphony, entitled This Will Be Our Reply, was composed by the conductor of the BSO, Lucas Richman. The piece was powerful and important. Before the performance, Richman offered some background on the piece and said he was inspired to write it by a speech Leonard Bernstein gave after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In his speech, Bernstein said that the response to violence had to be to “make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

In the symphony, the inner circle of musicians, which is the first row of violins, violas, and cellos, play this beautiful music and come back to it throughout the piece, all the while, you hear the outer symphony doing something else, including bombs and guns going off from the percussion. When the bombs and guns got louder, the inner circle played even harder. It was an important work–a reminder that, though humans can be so terrible, we can also be so very beautiful. We just need the artists to remind us.

I was so moved by the experience that I was still thinking about it that day in the raspberry bushes. I was thinking about how I sometimes feel so inadequate. I have such a big heart for art and beauty and making the world better yet have no idea how to do it and really no talent for doing so.

But, as I talked to Mary Jane, I thought maybe that’s okay. I’m never going to make beautiful art that will be remembered throughout the ages, but I am going to raise beautiful raspberries. These raspberries are not only beautiful, but they are also healthy and contain cancer-fighting chemicals that, as of yet, humans cannot fully replicate. They are magic, for lack of a better word. I am going to give those raspberries to my family and some of my friends–and to Mary Jane.

To Mary Jane, I think I might just be the best of humans and a good friend to have around.

And that has to be worth something–maybe an awful lot.