It took me one full year and ten months to realize that my alley is a copious farmland. I’ve always enjoyed watching the squirrels chitter and skitter about the fence and yard surrounding my house. But I never realized that there is a definite explanation for their glee.
A few weekends ago I was shut down by my roommate Mitch.
“Wanna go berry picking today?” I asked him, with the biggest puppy eyes and front-teeth baring grin I could muster.
“Mmmmm…..” he said, stroking his faintly stubbled chin, closing his eyelids over his pale blue eyes contemplatively. “No.”
I was sad. It was early enough in the morning that my hair was still standing up all over the place and I was wearing running shorts and a T-shirt — perfect attire to sadly return to my bed and nap the day away. I wanted to go pick blueberries so I could make blueberry salads with goat cheese, and blueberry tarts and blueberry muffin oatmeal. But how depressing would it be to go to a U-pick farm without a gaggle of family or friends? There are a lot of things I don’t mind doing alone, but showing up at a farm and picking berries just for me to eat? That prospect just sounds too sad.
Instead of going back to nap immediately, I wandered barefoot across the alley — Orchard alley — behind my house. At the end of a thirty foot wall of blackberry bushes that I had also previously ignored because of the spiders that like to weave their homes on top of the juice pregnant fruits, I saw some suspicious looking little white berries. I squatted closer to see the bluer berries I thought I saw lurking underneath. I picked one, to make sure it wasn’t some scare-berry that was faking to be a blue berry. Nope — just a sweet, tart, perfectly burstable blueberry.
It’s unclear to me who owns the berry bushes. It could be the semi-sketchy neighbor directly across the alley, who works for the University of Oregon Maintenance crew and has several “caretakers” come and “visit” him once a week. It could be the often absent Japanese family that own the house next door. Or, they could be unclaimed vestiges of what this neighborhood used to be: a spread out, orchard-populated, dominantly white, connected community.
Without a full plan of what I was going to use the berries for, I found myself several feet deep in the bush. Blackberry vines intertwined in the patch, so my legs were fashionably bloodied by a few sneaky thorns. My fingers turned purple. I filled a recycled yogurt container.
I want to die a little bit for every box of blueberries I’ve bought in the days since I’ve lived on Orchard Alley. First of all, the ones in my alley are free! Second, they taste better, even if mostly just because they’re warmed by the oppressive sun. Third, everything is always better when you put a little bit of your own labor or work or blood or thought into it before you consume it.
I could go to a U-pick farm and be embarrassed about being alone for a little bit, and then come home and stress out about the mass of berries and inevitable other produce I’d acquired. Or, I could do as the squirrels do. Go pick a handful of berries and shove them straight into my mouth, and then get on with the day. I don’t have the time to deal with a bunch of berries right now! And I don’t have a family, or a bunch of carefree friends and time!
I love my alley. I know it’s okay with having me here, too, because it patiently waits for me to keep discovering what it has to offer. As an outsider to Oregon, perhaps I am naively gleeful. But everybody should appreciate what’s free in your backyard, one handful at a time!
The back of my house on Orchard Alley
Besides blueberries, discoveries of this year include cherries, persimmons, domestic strawberries, three different types of plums, raspberries, at least 4 varieties of apples, mint, lemon-mint, apricots, and some anonymous neighbor’s tomato bush in the middle of the traffic blocker in the middle of Orchard Alley. And that’s just what’s edible!
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