October 8, 2008

• Incursion

   They are everywhere.

  The vague, unfocussed gray shape in the back of this photograph is our back fence.

  The berries you see, in all of their nearly black glory, hung delicately on hot pink stems, are hanging over our fence, blessing us with future generations of a weed our backside neighbors have grown with passionate abandon.

  Because there is a fence there, and because I live on this side of the fence, and because I am the exact and absolute average height for a woman (5'7") and I cannot see over the fence, I cannot see the area where this plant has thrived.

  And I will confess, in slightly smaller type, that Nancy and I have willingly and knowingly grown a pokeweed plant in our own yard. It was a bad year. The only plant that seemed to be doing well was the pokeweed, so we stood back and admired its glory as if we had somehow contributed to its robust enthusiasm for life. It died tragically when the Crystal Valley man came to give the air conditioner it's yearly physical. Apparently he decided we were not responsible enough to have our own pokeberry plant and he jerked it out.

  Our pokeberry was nothing like the pokeberry dropping future pokeberries over our back fence. I have done research. Pokeberry is a perennial, so while they do dry down each winter and leave only skeletal remains aboveground, they also get larger, stronger and produce more pokeberries with each new year. Some can reach the size of small trees, eight or nine feet tall and thick and shrublike. A pokeberry forest is possible.

  You have to admit this is an impressive plant. Nancy admired how pretty it has become just the other day, and I smiled and admired the number of pokeberry berries hanging, poised, above our flower garden. You have to admire productivity wherever you find it.

  Among other exciting bits of information that my research revealed is the fact that "children use the berries for dye."

  I have the sort of mind that has been known to remember things that never happened, or things that could have happened but somehow didn't, or even things that could have happened but didn't but should have. I therefore sometimes need to be careful about the memories that rush up to be told because--although I am not a pathological liar--I am the perfect audience for one. I do not require absolute  honestly from a storyteller: I require a good story.

  Therefore: listener beware. The first time I really paid attention to those berries, so dark and juice and just begging to be pinched and squeezed and mashed up a bowl I thought to myself, be careful because you'll never get that purple dye out.

  I have no idea whether that's true or not. The only way to find out is to go out in the back yard and mash a handful of berries. However, I have guests coming for the evening, and while I am not the rotating cook (the cook doesn't actually rotate, the cooking assignment rotates, but I do like the imagine of a spinning chef) I suspect some doubt and unease might be caused if I were to appear with deeply purple palms.

  I had access to pokeweed as a child. I know this, because the first time I knowingly saw one as an adult I knew immediately that a.)it's called 'pokeweed', and b.) I would die almost immediately, dropping on the spot, if I ate those delightfully purple berries. As it turns out, both pieces of information are true, although precisely how lethal or immediate the poison is I'm not longer quite so sure. I have heard rumors all of my life that poison ivy causes a horrible itchy rash that can come right on inside your body and make you deathly ill--if I've ever had a single ivy blister I don't remember it, and I have brushed up against it...probably yearly...my entire life. Perhaps I am also immune to pokeweed.

  However, my memory--which I believe I have already established is not all that reliable--also warned me the berries are unbelievably unpleasant to taste. This may have been something my mother told me.

  She was like that.

    

  • 9:25 am
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