The raspberry patch

Every few days I crawl into the understorey of the raspberry patch to pull up as many bindweed shoots as I can find. Inevitably by next time many more will have arrowed upwards using the raspberry canes to reach for the sky.
The raspberries are in bloom above my head and the air is filled with buzzing as innumerable bees and other pollinators blunder from flower to flower - an optimistic sound betokening a good crop of fruit - to be enjoyed by birds and grandchildren.

Later in the day I read that new research has discovered that the sound of buzzing can stimulate plants to produce more nectar - the vibro-acoustic signals  of approaching pollinators seem to trigger its production in the plants studied. (See here ) How amazing is that?

The Raspberry Room

It was solid hedge, loops of bramble and thorny   
as it had to be with its berries thick as bumblebees.   
It drew blood just to get there, but I was queen   
of that place, at ten, though the berries shook like fists   
in the wind, daring anyone to come in.  I was trying   
so hard to love this world—real rooms too big and full   
of worry to comfortably inhabit—but believing I was born
to live in that cloistered green bower: the raspberry patch   
in the back acre of my grandparents’ orchard.  I was cross-   
stitched and beaded by its fat, dollmaker’s needles.  The effort   
of sliding under the heavy, spiked tangles that tore   
my clothes and smeared me with juice was rewarded   
with space, wholly mine, a kind of room out of   
the crush of the bushes with a canopy of raspberry   
dagger-leaves and a syrup of sun and birdsong.   
Hours would pass in the loud buzz of it, blood   
made it mine—the adventure of that red sting singing   
down my calves, the place the scratches brought me to:   
just space enough for a girl to lie down.   

Karen Gottshall, 2007