Friends and Gardens

My mom passed away from cancer almost 20 years ago. She loved to garden, and had rows and rows of canned goods in our basement. She also loved talking on the phone, and her dearest phone confidente still sends me Christmas cards each year and asks about me.

I did not inherit my mom's love of the telephone. I did, however, inherit her other passions. Today my arms are raw with scratches from picking raspberries. But oh, the jelly I'll make!

I got the raspberry plants just a few years ago from a neighbor. She had a huge garden full of raspberries and once she learned that I canned, she made a deal: each season she picked the berries and I made the jelly, and we both enjoyed the results.

She eventually moved away but in the weeks before, she urged me to dig up her raspberry plants and bring them to my garden. I wasn't optimistic that anything would survive, but she kept prodding me. In the end I moved eight plants. Only half survived that first year, but they've doubled in number each year since.

The original raspberry garden was quickly pulled down by the new neighbors, as my friend had evidently feared. When I run into her now, she always asks about "her" raspberries.

In a way, my garden is the child of her beloved friend who's since passed on. She spent hours in her garden and now that it's gone, she's glad to know our raspberry tradition continues. My neighbor and my mom's best friend feel consoled in similar ways.

God bless friends and gardens, and all the people who watch over them.