I walked away from my car at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum realizing I was wearing a short sleeve shirt. Usually, I might wear one underneath a long sleeve or just wear a long sleeve if it’s warm. Until this day, I had never worn a short sleeve alone when removing blackberry plants, cutting them up, and putting them into a plastic bag for disposal. I’m asking for trouble, I told myself, but quickly thought that this one day I could make an exception, despite my splinted ring finger, which needed several more weeks of TLC after a tendon repair. Because of my injury, putting blackberry plants into a large plastic bag would be more difficult. I rationalized I wasn’t going to be doing much work out there, and short sleeves would be fine.
Wrong. Bad idea. Lazy. Learning opportunity. Be kind to yourself. Self empathy. I rub my arms, when I feel badly or made a wrong decision, reminding myself I am not a bad person by my attempt, but just made a bad decision.
I have an interesting relationship with blackberry plants. On one hand, I remove them from the sides of trails at the Arboretum, where they are invasive, block normal animal pathways or prevent other plants from growing, although perhaps poison oak is prevented growing as well.
On the other hand, my relationship with blackberries is not always destructive. I walk through Alton Baker Park often, and in early summer, I collect ripe blackberries, wash and freeze them, later using them on my cereal along with cherries, blueberries, strawberries, peaches, and any other fruit I can find. I know where there are plenty of blackberries, and I also know that when the stems, but not the roots, have been removed, within a year or two they will grow, invade, but also produce tasty fruit again. When there are berries present on plants I am removing, I often eat them and then remove the plant.
I additionally have an interesting relationship with the Arboretum, dating back a year when I was undergoing radiation, where part way through that time, when I was just beginning to have dietary issues, the mushroom festival occurred and I volunteered to make multiple laps around the facility, emptying trash, separating recyclables from non recyclables. I did that for six hours, with occasional breaks at the visitor table. I got to know some of the staff; they were nice to me, I was appreciated for dealing with garbage, and I later became a significant donor.
My being a donor did not, however, absolve me from wanting to volunteer my time at the Arboretum where I did all sorts of trail and field work, some of it done well, others requiring a few explanations of what I was supposed to be doing. But I had fun, did reasonable work, and enjoyed being out there. I enjoyed the work so much that I asked if I could work on my own because I knew there were invasive geraniums as well as blackberries. Altogether, I have removed 10 different types of undesirable/invasive plants for four different organizations.
I first dealt with blackberry plants next door to the Arboretum at Friends at Buford Park. There, I used an electric power brusher, a weed whacker, clearing many blackberry plants from an area followed by digging out the stems and removing the tap roots individually, required for permanent removal. I learned when the soil was wet the plant could be removed easier, additionally learning what I could do with one arm or both. A few of us cleared a half acre, removing all plants, including the roots. When I worked at the Arboretum, I first began on Hillside Trail and cleared 3/8 of a mile of plants along both sides.The small blackberry plants were easily removed; larger ones more difficult, and at the Arboretum I had neither the resources nor the time to completely remove large ones in thickets, so I cut them where I could and then tried to shove the stems in a 120 liter plastic bag. The larger plants vigorously resisted, and I was cut up considerably in the process.
What I’m doing at the Arboretum is therefore temporary; if work is not continued in the future, the blackberries will return.
A couple of months earlier, an elderly man walked by, eight years older than I, as it turned out, so he was truly elderly, maybe even old, and asked if I knew the person who used to do the plant removal. I didn’t know anybody ever did what I was doing, and the Arboretum staff is new enough to not know either. In any case, I enjoy being part of a small chain, forging another link in removing an invasive plant in a pleasant environment with shade, places to rest, few people, and in the right season, even eating a few delicious berries. One could do worse in life.
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