Our family home in Ottawa featured a raspberry jungle along the west side of the house, obscuring my bedroom window, but certainly protecting me from burglars and other delinquents. The canes yielded some 30 or 40 pounds of raspberries every summer, or so I believe, as in latter years none of us was ever there during the summer to enjoy them.
When I first bought La Hacquinière, my parents were kind enough to smuggle over some Maple saplings, which I planted at the back of the property, and which the native oak trees appear to be tolerating.
With my parents’ impending sale of the Ottawa house it became urgent to indulge in some more infringement of various farm and wildlife laws. At great personal risk, my parents, on two separate occasions, smuggled in raspberry canes which, planted at the back of the property (where we plant anything we don’t want the Gendarmes to see) appear to have withered to naught.
When the big move finally occurred last summer, my father entrusted me with four last canes, which I carefully packed in one of the steamer trunks with which we had crossed the Atlantic forty years ago. Back at la Hacq, I carefully planted the canes on the west side of the house, and watched the leaves crumble with the autumn. Three days ago, with new leaves sprouting, it appeared that the raspberry canes had survived their travails.
Perhaps there is still hope for my bonsai bear.
No comments:
Post a Comment