Grandma and Her Marionberries

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

Plants have parents and grandparents, just like we do. It’s not called the “family tree” for nothin’. And every year when our Marionberries ripen, my heart grows tender, reminding me that this bush roots into my family history. Picking berries, I find my grandmother right there beside me.

Grandma Rolla grew up picking strawberries, beets, potatoes, hops, and so much more. She lived in Carlton, Oregon, and used to walk almost 8 miles with her friends to go “jitterbug”dancing in McMinnville on Friday nights. Rolla was the daughter of pickers, as well. Her folks, skillful with their hands, met and fell in love while picking hops in Independence, Oregon.

I didn’t know my grandma when I was young, though I look just like her. I did, however, feel at home with plants, trees, and fresh picked fruit. As a young adult, I got to know Rolla, and she taught me the value of “picking a bush clean,” so as not to “waste” someone else’s time with scattered leftovers. Rolla, who grew up to be a highly principled antique dealer, was forever rooted in the farm and garden. Integrity smelled and felt like dirt.

So it’s maybe no wonder that in her seventies, Grandma Rolla insisted that I take a slip of Marionberry from her garden to plant in mine. I was young and didn’t fully value the gift. I forgot to water it, then planted something overtop. But years later, that Marionberry persists. We came to love her and gave her a room of her own, some hog wire to hang from. The same Marionberry now occupies 2 locations in our garden and gifts us in July with hundreds, if not thousands, of the most tender and juicy purple-black berries. I feel Grandma Rolla standing right there behind me every morning, seeing to it that I pick the bush clean. (We do leave some berries in the end to share with other animal and bird friends.)

Where do the roots of plants intertwine with the roots of your family? What piece of earth smells like home to you?