May we spread the seeds of true justice across our nation.
May we water them with our grief, and tend them with great love.
Spring’s robe swishes as she walks through the rows of apple trees, the small fruit now covered with white clay to protect it from the egg-laying stings of the plum curculio beetle.
On the high-bush blueberries, the white bell-like corollas dry, then fall, exposing small green fruit.
The mulberries pop out from smooth branches like furry caterpillars,
and the husks of the peaches fall to the ground revealing first fuzz.
Fruits are ovaries, designed to protect the all important seeds. Peppers, tomatoes, as well as squash are technically fruits, but we think of them as vegetables. Asparagus aren’t fruits, but because they are a perennial crop, we give them two long rows in the berry patch. The stalks shoot up overnight.
Rhubarb is technically a vegetable, but it’s most often cooked in pies or with sugar to sweeten its tart taste, and therefore, is often thought to be a fruit. Our favorite recipe for rhubarb is stewed with strawberries and a bit of honey or maple syrup.
Not far away, the blackberry buds entice as if there weren’t hiding sharp thorns.
Blackberries ripen well before the red raspberries whose canes are mowed to the ground in early spring. Fall raspberries grow four to five feet high, bud, flower, and bear fruit all in one season.
Seedless table grapes are a new crop for the farm, the vines are only beginning their long climb to maturity.
Finally, spring embraces summer, and the strawberry ripening begins.
Photos: Linda Hoffman and Ariel Matisse