The following is part of an e-mail from my daughter Aroea Knox from earlier this summer. I use it with her permission. JJB
The other big story of my mommy life right now is raspberries. My patch (that I tried to get rid of and didn’t succeed) is producing quite a yield and I’m delighted. Had I known how nice it is to have a bowl of fresh berries every day (totally organic too!) I’d never have tried to cut it down. I have had to learn a lot though. How to prune, how to pick and mostly… how to get rid of Japanese Beetles! THEY ARE DISGUSTING. I came back from vacation to find all the top leaves of my shoots eaten and huge clusters of brown bugs all over them. I didn’t even know what they were. Thank God for Google. In no time, armed with a squirt bottle full of water and dish soap I was out in the back yard making a vigorous attack. It did the trick too. I still have to go out twice a day and pick off the stragglers (Japanese beetles flock to each other, so if one lands, 12 or so are bound to follow) to keep them clear but it’s well worth the effort. Not only have I enjoyed fresh berries I’ve really met the Lord out in that silly patch. Permit me to share.
Lessons from the berry patch:
- Good fruit is achieved by daily maintenance. You cannot just do something once. You have to
make it a habit. You have to do it everyday if you really want to get something out of what you’re doing.
-You have to tend the fruit. If I don’t come out and spray twice a day the plants quickly are overrun with beetles. So it is, that what we do not tend to, will become overrun with little things that devour.
-If you want to yield good fruit you must go low. It’s much easier to see berries when looking up from down low. So it is with life. That when we humble ourselves we see much clearer and find the best things.
-Look in the secret places. Go deep. You can see some berries on top but that’s also where the bugs all land. Many of those berries are also scorched by the sun. If you go past the surface, and lift the foliage that’s where the large, deep red berries are; hidden underneath. In life we have to search for the good things. We have to be seekers, we have to reach inside if we want to get to the good stuff.
-You know berries are ripe when they are soft to the touch. Similarly, when we mature we should soften.
-To get good fruit you have to pick gently. Don’t just grab willy, nilly and jerk. Then you can’t tell the mature fruit from the others and you get bitter berries. Mature berries will come off easily but you can only tell that if you pull carefully. A soft touch goes a long way.
- Surround yourself with people who delight in good fruit. I learned this as my father, aunt and uncle followed me into my back yard. Instead of looking out and seeing an poorly manicured mass of foliage they eagerly jumped into the patch and helped me pick. They didn’t care about appearance. They cared about the fruit. So we need to keep the people in our lives who care not about how we appear, but what we bear.
- Get outside. The Lord made nature to reveal His nature. If you want to see God, looking at what He’s created is a good place to start.
And so the girl learns…
-Berry Picker
