Too Much Soup, Too Much Bread, and Migrating Berries

 I pull into the garage at noon. I've been at the dentist having a filling replaced. I'm hungry and trying to unwind from that tensity and angst one feels after listening to the whirl of a drill in one's mouth for almost an hour. And then there's that unanswered question: how long until I can eat? The dentist didn't mention it, so I suppose I'm fine as long as I don't chomp down on some peanut brittle.

I see a text. My neighbor has just pulled fresh bread out of the heaven. Would we like a loaf?

Would we ever! I volunteer to come right over and get it. When she places it in my hands, I can still feel the warmth. I put my nose to it and smell the goodness of a warm loaf of bread. My thanks are profuse. What timing! Lucky me. 

Another day, another text. This time it's a friend/neighbor offering me a bit of a casserole that he's quite pleased with. He used fresh beans from his garden. I would love some! It's late at night when I finally answer. The next morning I find the bit of casserole well wrapped on my front porch. 

When I make too much chicken soup, when I hear his family has strep, I take a container to his house.

Another neighbor is in need of some fresh rosemary for a dish she's making. She asks to come pick. Take half the bush, I reply. Once again, my rosemary bush has overgrown the space allotted. She takes extra to dry for later.

Over the past twenty-seven years, I have nurtured a raspberry patch. I work supplements into the soil. I prune the brambles every spring. It rewards me every summer with an abundance of berries--until recently. One small area of the patch showed signs of berries forming, but then they stopped growing. And other brambles quit producing berries too. I had planted in a few bare patches some strawberry plants that multiplied and started shoving out the raspberries. I learned too late that raspberries and strawberries are not compatible in the same patch. I had to face that I'd destroyed my own beautiful raspberry patch.

There was one consolation. My raspberries had somehow, magnificently climbed ten feet into the yard of my neighbor, into an empty patch of ground. We both marveled at their migration, and this summer, I watched as she picked her first raspberries, and of course, she shared one with me.