Friday, July 19, 2013

My Dad's love for me shown through the dead blackberries............

Funny title eh? You may know from reading my blog that we live on family land. When my husband and I got married my Dad gave us some of his land. It' really quite magical where we live.... anyways my dad has several huge garden, always has. We help with them and of course have somethings of our own planted, but we all share the fruits ( literally) of each other's labours. When my husband and I firt started living down the road from my childhood home, I thought it was important for me to prove myself as an independent green thumb by planting my OWN garden. Instead of just getting an extra row in the main garden, I was ademant about proving that I could infact grow things myself. My Dad obliged me by tilling up a small plot to the east of my home. I planted tomatoes, and peppers, and cabbages and all kinds of yummy stuff. But what I really hoped to grow was blackberries. At the end of each row I plant beautiful blackberry bushes. I could almost taste the sweetness... Well I was starting a new job, and had family responsibilities and this and this and this and as much as I hate to admit it, I didn't take care of the blackberries like I should have. They died. All of them. One day I was sitting out underneath the tree with my family and my Dad asked me how the blackberrie were doing. I had to confess to my green thumb hero that I had killed all the blackberries by lack of nurture ( and more specifically water). He just smiled , patted me on the back and said " There's always next year". A few days later I was taking a walk by the failure of blackberry plants and there at the end of each row, were new, freshly planted, freshly watered blackberries. My Dad had snuck in and planted them without me knowing. You better beleive I took extreme care to make sure these grew and to this day they give the sweetest, biggest berries EVER.