During the hard years, all the gardens went: first, years ago, the big vegetable garden down in the field at the back; then the bed of hollyhocks by the stone wall; then the irises and day lilies alongside the garage; then the old perennial bed, out behind the garage--I dug out the best plants for the new perennial bed by the driveway--and finally the new perennial bed itself, where the peonies are still fighting it out with the wild violets, but the lupines went under without a trace.

I felt miserable about the waste and the ugliness, but I couldn't for the life of me manage, even after life turned around and started getting better. What with single motherhood, struggling with my own recovery and trying to make a living and run the household, dealing with all these gardens wasn't even an outside possibility. And I've never been much of a gardener. I get defeated easily, and I take no pleasure in weeding, as I do in cooking or even in folding laundry.

I tried now and again to tackle the mess, but it got uglier and bigger and deeper, especially when the wild brambles sprung up around the side and back of the garage. They were horrible to try to get rid of--tough, thorny, and tenacious, ready to spring back up if you left a thread of a root or the smallest tendrilly stem--and I already had more than enough to struggle with. So I just closed my eyes, metaphorically speaking, and let the wild things take over. I couldn't ever quite forget they were there, and I kept wondering what my nice next-door neighbours thought of the mess--but I did my best just to put it out of mind. If you can't fix it, it doesn't do any good to worry about it much.

Then, last Sunday afternoon, while we were out fixing the busted mailbox (bored local kids driving by with a baseball bat), the nice next-door neighbour lady said, "Did you know about those blackberries out back?" I just looked at her blankly. She said, "Around the side of the garage--you've got so many ripe berries, you'd better go get them before the birds do." So I went out around the back of the garage, which I haven't even looked at properly in maybe a couple-three years, and there it was: quite a splendid berry patch, bearing hugely, clusters of ripe berries wherever I looked.

I felt a little stunned: oh, such grace! Such abundance! Out of my mess and muddle, out of all this ugliness and angular mass of thorn, there comes such sweetness and freshness and fruitfulness.... If I'd been less of a rank failure as a gardener, these berries wouldn't be here. I got containers, and in under 10 minutes we had maybe three quarts. Whole clusters of ripe berries, five or six at a time, tumbled into the palm of my hand at the lightest touch. There were so many left that I told the nice neighbours to help themselves, and there will still be lots left for the birds. And I have never tasted better berries in my life, perfectly balanced between the sweet and the tart and as full of flavour as a berry can be.

We ate our berries with very good vanilla ice cream (wonderful!) And then I got busy with other things, and my kid came down with the chickenpox, and I kept meaning to go out back and pick some more, but it's been One of Those Weeks. Until this morning, when the doorbell rang and my nice neighbour was there, with two jars of blackberry freezer jam. I'd given her free run of the patch, and she'd got busy, and here were the results. A couple of years ago, she had a run-in with breast cancer, and I put her on the prayer list and sent over some bread when she came home after the surgery, and it all meant more to her than I'd realized. This was her way of saying thank you. We aren't normally close, but we hugged in my front hall, and I thought again: what mysteries can come come of the mess we make of things, when we give the dear Lord permission to fool around.

I think I will bake some fresh bread on Sunday to put the jam on, and take a loaf over to my nice neighbours. And then I will have to learn how to keep this patch I've been so serindipitously given--although I am deeply grateful that it seems to do so well without my having much say in the matter. I am not a gardener, and I never will be. This is none of my doing; it is the grace of God and nature, working miracles without our even knowing it, where we humans had left only our own sorry messes.

What else, after all, is redemption?

(for the McGaheys, my nice neighbours)