Killing Raspberries

Self Knowledge Is Dangerous

This is how to get a difficult job done. While I’d like to suggest that this takes strong character, persistence, focus, a clear plan, and timeline—that would be a pack of lies. The first way to get a difficult job done is to ignore it. But when faced with reality of having to get the job done, the only way you can do it is self-delusion. Here is an example.

There is a sunny sky overhead, the air temperature is about 60, and the wind is gusting from the northwest at about 15. This is Colorado in mid-March and this is an average March day. However, one side of that average could be 75 degrees with no wind just as well as it could be 25 degrees with fierce bands of snow and huge wind on the other side of the average.

Given a March day in the High Country and the fact that I had ignored a garden problem for the past seven months, I decided that I’d see if I could make any progress digging out the raspberry bushes.

The bushes had developed a fungus that curled the leaves and impaired the growth of fruit. The protocol for controlling the problem is to cut the diseased canes and dispose of them. We had done this for several seasons but the problem got much worse last summer with severe quality and quantity issues with the fruit. Blue Eyes wanted the raspberry bushes gone in August. As you have read, I’ve leaped into action in mid-March.

By way of explanation, we had a place in the mountains outside of Boulder that we bought before we were married. We called it, “The Cabin”. It was actually a wonderful DIY house built by a mechanical engineer. The Cabin had a rock-storage solar heating system, a greenhouse on the south deck, three small bedrooms, two small bathrooms, and a medium-sized kitchen. There was a large combination living room-dining room. The greenhouse was off a slider in the dining room and faced south.

Blue Eyes tended the fifteen or so large plants in the greenhouse that were mostly lovely, some of them blooming even in the short days of winter. But one summer day I was working in our fenced-in front yard on the south side of the house when I heard a loud “THUMP” as something crashed to the ground in the leach field, having been tossed off the east deck.

I guessed what happened but later in the day I asked her if she had heard the same noise. She had and explained.

“The large geranium was ratty looking and not flowering very much over the winter.” She said.

“It was old, taking up too much space in the greenhouse, and too big to do much with.”

“Yeah?”

“So I hauled the huge pot over to the east deck, dug the plant out of the pot, and tossed it into the leach field below.”

“And as I die, the last thing I’m going to see above me is you standing on the east deck as I drop into the leach field?”

A big smile but no further comment from sparkling Blue Eyes.

Given her impulsive penchant for disposing of plants, she gave me some level of excuse for not taking any action against the raspberries. Everything deserves to live out its natural life without getting tossed into a leach field.

The raised bed for the raspberries is about nine feet long and three feet wide. I planted the raspberries about ten years ago. To be honest, it was too small a space for raspberries, but no matter, ignoring common sense, I planted anyway. The first couple of years were uninspiring, but for four or five years we had great crops of fruit. Our neighbors would take passes at the garden on their dog walks to score sweet raspberries.Then the fungus hit the plants.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been 50. I’ve learned over the years to approach difficult tasks slowly at a sustainable pace. The idea is simply to get the job done at the highest level of quality that I can sustain, in as long a time as it takes.

When I started digging with a sharpshooter my back began to hurt. It was low back pain. A dull throb that, while not debilitating, was annoying. At this stage in life a certain amount of physical ache is a given. When I get up, I roll out of bed, put my feet on the floor and do an ache analysis. To each ache, I assign an antecedent.

For example, my thighs ache because I rode hard on my bike for 20 miles instead of 10. Or my right shoulder aches because I tripped over Carly the dog and caught myself mid-fall with my stiff arm to the end of the couch. If there is no antecedent to an ache, I log the ache on my mental ache list. If the ache occurs three days in a row, I worry about the ache as a sign of impending doom; however, I do nothing about it. One hundred percent of the time, the ache has eventually gone away.

But the back ache was an excuse to stop working. By that time I had cleared maybe 25% of the raised bed. One of the many good things about aging is a substantial level of self knowledge. In spite of the ache, I knew that if I quit at 25% of the job done, it might be June until I finished the work, given my penchant for avoiding disagreeable work. So I went inside and dropped two hits of Vitamin I and went back to work.

Then I made a deal with myself, I would wait for the ibuprofen to ease the ache and then I’d get half the raised bed cleared of raspberries and call it day. My reward for a half-assed job was that I would come inside, take a shower, and read with a very cold Martini on the side table.

In due time, I got half the raspberries out, and the soil associated with them, filtered out the roots with a screen over the wheelbarrow, and dumped the soil in the wheelbarrow into a neat pile. But I didn’t stop. I made another deal with myself. In another hour I could get three-fourths of the raspberries dug up. Just one more hour. Not a problem. One hour. And then whenever in July I returned to finish the job, the final one fourth would only take me an hour or so of back-aching work.

I put in an additional hour. I noticed that my back didn’t hurt anymore. Fine, I’ve gone beyond ache and will pay the price tomorrow. While the worked slowed I made progress. It was mid-afternoon and I still had to incorporate the editor’s corrections into my usual 6pm Sunday post, I clearly needed a shower, and I was supposed to make tacos for dinner.

“Screw it,” I thought. If I finished the job I wouldn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night thinking about how awful it is to dig up raspberry bushes. I wouldn’t have to deal with a smirk(s) from Blue Eyes. And I could move on to another awful task such as digging out a sinking fence post in the courtyard.

Yeah, I finished digging out the raspberries in about five hours.

Did I learn anything?

Beats me.

And then there is sinking fence post.

END

I am alanstark1@substack.com

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