When my parents and I moved from my mom’s duplex in the city to a house in the Chicago suburb of Skokie we, for the most part, knew what we were getting. The suburbs had better schools, a quieter atmosphere and the opportunity for my parents to buy their first home together. Obviously, since I had just turned 1 not long before the move, I didn’t have a strong voice in the decision; however I was still a central reason as to why they decided to move when and where they did.
After a brief search my parents found a nice 2-story 3-bedroom house on a quiet street that they liked, and, as luck would have it, the house ended up being in their price range because the seller was an older man whose wife had just passed and was looking to sell quickly and move closer to his children. In recent years the house, which the seller had built himself, had fallen into some disrepair; however for my parents this was a long-term investment, so they decided to buy the house and inevitable projects that came with it.
Over the past 30 years that my parents have lived in that house they have engaged in many renovation projects and repairs, but the central characteristics of the house remain the same. Aside from some structural and cosmetic changes that are either enclosed within the interior of the house, or not visible unless you can see through walls, the house, from the outside, looks pretty much the same as when they first bought it. The red brick that the original builder made the house’s exterior trademark remains unchanged as well as the 2-car garage that sits between the house and the alley and the layout of the backyard.
The large backyard was a main selling point, along with the price, that pushed my parents toward ultimately making the decision to buy the house, as well as a side-yard and large backyard that was spacious enough for a swing set and tree house. Since my parents didn’t plan on only having 1 child I’m sure the thought of letting my sibling(s) and me occupy ourselves by playing in the backyard crossed their mind as an obvious bonus.
Even with the swing set and tree house (that my parents would put in for us a few years after moving in) there was still plenty of room in the backyard for both a flower and vegetable garden. These spaces excited my mom who was an avid gardener, but little did she know that hidden within the soil of her soon to be vegetable garden was a surprise that was going to rear its head as soon as the weather turned warm and a little water fell onto the barren soil.
The first spring after my parents bought their new house, as the temperature began to rise and rainy days provided nourishment for the soil, slowly, the color green began to overrun the vegetable garden. As my mom surveyed her new canvas she noticed that little buds were beginning to form on a couple of the small bushes in the far corner of the garden, and for the next several weeks she monitored this area, curious as to what had been planted there previously, while also planting her own vegetables in other empty areas of the garden.
Finally, as the other flowers and vegetables my mom had planted were coming into bloom, my parents discovered something they were previously unaware had come with their new house, which were raspberry bushes in the back corner of their vegetable garden bordering the back alley. That summer raspberries were in abundance and since I had my feet under me, and was quite curious about exploring the world on 2 feet instead of through my previous slow crawl, would walk out with one of my parents to the garden holding a little cup and pick the reddest, juiciest raspberries from the bushes – always returning from the garden with my hands and face covered in sweet red juice.
Summer after summer those same raspberry bushes have returned to my parent’s garden, and like clockwork so have I to collect bowl after bowl of delicious, deep red raspberries. Sometimes the tiny berries don’t make to the my bowl since I can’t resist sampling a few of the ripest ones before bringing in the rest of the harvest; however there are so many raspberry bushes now in my parent’s garden yielding the fruit that the few I eat during picking aren’t missed when I bring back the final haul for everyone else to enjoy, and unlike when I was a little kid picking raspberries I’m much better at keeping the evidence of my indulgence off of my hands and face.
