Rubus fruticosus

When I moved to my present house, the city block on which it's located was essentially one large plantation of blackberries. Each back yard was a space carved out of this plantation -- space stolen from the domain of the Mother Bramble, if you will. Where many city blocks might have an alley, we on 26th Avenue were separated from the houses behind us on 25th by a tangle of blackberry vines, growing on lots facing both streets, a tangle that towered above us. The Mother Bramble also shot out extensions, like pseudopods, between adjacent lots as well, so that my backyard was protected on three sides by walls of barbed vines.

Fences make good neighbors, but we had no need for wooden fences. We had our blackberries. And our "fences," unlike those built of sterile cedar planks, produced fruit. Quite tasty fruit, especially about this time of year.

But change came to the 'hood. More and more upward-aspirational techies and professionals moved in. The alluring photos in Sunset magazine didn't show back yards surrounded by blackberry vines, and Sunset magazine (or some more upscale version thereof) was the garden bible for the new immigrants.

I've always regretted the felling of the great American forest by the pioneers and those who came after. Something similar happened around these parts, as homeowner after homeowner cut his way deeper and deeper into the blackberry jungle. I'm not entirely immune from peer pressure, although more immune, perhaps, than my neighbors would prefer. I, too, eventually hired workers to root out my blackberries, to sanitize my backyard, to show myself as a civilized man in a civiized neighborhood.

The blackberries were gone, but, like Adam and Eve after the Fall, we now felt ourselves naked. The fellow next door quickly hid himself from his neighbors by building a fence around his yard to replace the blackberry barriers. I countered his starkly utilitarian fence, shielding it from my view, by planting a laurel hedge. My yard now appears reasonably tidied up. Just like everyone else's.

I have met the enemy, and he be me.

But there's a postscript. Blackberries don't surrender gracefully. They may concede the battle, but not the war. In corners of my yard, they spring back to life whenever my back is turned. Before I really notice, they begin reasserting themselves with renewed vigor, claiming territory as theirs by right. Just as the medieval church discovered, the battle against heresy is never won, because heresy always raises its ugly head when vigilance is relaxed.

And like a new convert to orthodoxy, my horror at each reappearance of blackberry vines exceeds the bounds of reason. I've been inspecting my backyard each morning with pruning shears in hand, ready to cut down each timid blackberry sprout as it emerges from the soil. My strategy is psychological -- the hope that I can convince the blackberries that resistance is futile, that they will be utterly destroyed the moment they appear above ground.

Punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit

as the 1578 handbook of the Inquisition so adroitly phrased it.

Soon, I shall have extirpated the species entirely from my domain, and will live in a totally domesticated and controlled environment, with only those plants authorized by the editors of Sunset growing in my closely watched soil. I have conquered not only the wiles of Rubus fruticosus , but also my own earlier weakness and unhealthy tolerance of heterodoxy.

I think I'll celebrate by going to Safeway and buying a $4.99 carton of blackberries to heap on my mornng cereal.