Raspberry Guilt

July 13, 2023

I deeply admire people who are talented at helping the Earth be the best she can be: people who fertilize, who thin rows of growing carrots, who preserve things in Mason jars with plaid lid patterns. It has always seemed to me to be such a wonderfully grounded way to live. And I especially love how generous these souls typically are, how willing they are to invite their friends over to pick and take. But last week, over a bowl of blueberries, my friend Anne told me there was also a dark side.

She and I had just spent a blissful half-hour picking from the loaded bushes in her yard and were enjoying them on her porch while I demonstrated the Merlin app that identifies birdsongs. I told her how much I envied her garden: It's like Eden every year. "Sure," she said, "but then there's all this Raspberry Guilt." She went on to explain that she always starts the summer with great intentions for pruning and harvesting and cooking and preserving, but then other things leap onto her radar, and ultimately a great deal of fruit stays hanging on the vine. That seems like a sin, which probably explains why gardeners are so eager to load their friends' arms with their extra zucchini. She comforts herself that at least the birds get to eat her extra raspberries.

But summer is like that for every family, no? We all want to steep ourselves in the season and squeeze the very most out of it, we want to take advantage of all of the out-and-about experiences our community offers, we want to craft tasty memories for our kids that they'll relive in stories in years to come. But of course, it's not possible to do it all; there is always fruit left hanging on the vine, out of reach but in full view. So I think we all experience our own version of Raspberry Guilt, and I guess it's good to know it when we see it. In Anne's case, at least—thanks to Merlin—she now knows that her loss is a grey catbird's gain.

Given that there seems to be no escaping Raspberry Guilt, perhaps we should just lean in. I'll take a second helping, please.

—Deb