Let The Berries Fall Where They May

Mara here:

We bought our house in 2004...

When we bought it, we a) didn't think we would live in the house for more than 5 years, and b) assumed we would fix it up.

Well, almost 14 years later, we have fixed some things, but there are a lot of things we never got around to changing. There were always other things to spend the money on, or we didn't have the time or desire to deal with finding people to do the work.

We love our house. It's been an amazing little house to raise our daughter. It's never leaked, it rarely loses power, and it feels like "home" whenever I return to it.

But twice a year, I am reminded about something that was definitely one of those things we always said "we'll fix" but just never happened.

That brings me to the berries.

This is different from the other weird berry tree that grew in our front yard. That was a mystery for many years but was finally identified as a Mulberry tree.

This is a different tree.

There is a tree directly in front of the house that spreads over our roof and our driveway. We love this tree because it provides some privacy, but more importantly it provides shade from the setting sun.

It's is some sort of berry tree (or maybe another kind of fruit). We've never bothered to figure out what type of tree it is. The berries are black, maybe dark blue, and they have a pit similar to a cherry. And twice a year, they fall all over our driveway.

It's a barrage of little berry bombs that splat all over our cars, all over our driveway and then get tracked into our house with its white tiles. They stick to the bottom of shoes and leave little poop-like berry skid marks all over.

And every time it happens, we all say, "Oh the berries are back." Then I spend a couple weeks sweeping and Swiffering the house like a crazy person. Because it honestly does look a bit like someone stepped in poop and just tracked it all over. So I sweep, and Swiffer and mop and scrub (the skins of the berries stick to the tiles like stickers) over and over and over.

And then one day the berries stop. They're just gone.

And then I forget about them—until they start falling again.

For several years, the dropping berries would make me very agitated. I felt burdened by the "berry situation." I would try to sweep the driveway every day, which requires scraping the dried pits and berry sludge off the cement. It's actually a lot of work.  I felt like I constantly needed to explain why our floors looked the way they did to everyone who entered. 

And I would complain about how we never get anything done and our house is a wreck...and the whole thing would spiral into a much bigger deal that it is. The berries became a reflection of the fact that we never built the driveway cover. No, we never remodeled the front of the house and uprooted the tree. No we don't trim the tree as often as we should to minimize the number of berries dropping.

But these past couple of times the berries have arrived, I realized I don't really care about them anymore. Yes, I notice them. Yes, I still complain. (We all complain.) Yes I still clean them up. But I'm not angry at them anymore. They used to feel like such an affront to me. How dare the berries exist and make things messy.

Maybe because I'm older and more tired and have other things that feel more worrisome, but the hassle of the berries feels less and less important. Instead of feeling like a big burden, they are just an annoyance.

At some point I just decided to let the berries fall where they may.

I can't control the berries, and the reality is that at this point we aren't going to make significant changes to the house. So I have come to a mental understanding with the berries. They exist and they will fall and I will deal with them when they do.

Now it's a familiar little quirk of the house. After we've moved out of our house, I will forever remember "the berries" and will probably think about them fondly and even miss them a little when I don't have them.

I wondered if there were things about my childhood house that drove my mom crazy when I was growing up:

Our Davis house definitely needed work done. You guys have done a lot to it since I moved away. Was there anything that always drove you crazy but that you never bothered to fix?

We have our version of your berry tree! It's some kind of plum tree (with fruit that I find inedible—it's the size of a large grape). It sits toward the bottom of one side of our driveway. The fruit falls all over the driveway, on any car that's parked in the driveway, and on the sidewalk in front of the house. The fruit gets squishy and then gets crushed underfoot and then dries very hard on whatever it touches (including the soles of your shoes). Every year, I try to grab them off the sidewalk and driveway before they get squishy but I can't keep up with the task. And so everyone who walks by in the summer months gets them on their shoes. I always think we're being rude to people in the neighborhood who walk on the sidewalk at that place.

Every once in a while, I have someone cut the tree back from the driveway and the sidewalk (it's too tall for me to prune) and that works for one season. I will not miss that tree when we no longer live here!

Then there are a few things we fixed that have never quite worked right, like our sprinkler system. We installed one underground and put an automatic timer inside the house so I can set it to water overnight at four different "stations" (which makes our house sound big...but it isn't). But...I can't get that automatic system to work even though I've replaced the device twice. Once I set it to automatic, on the nights it goes on, it stays on, recycling the stations over and over. I wake up in the morning with the front gutters flooded. I finally gave up and turned off the automatic setting. Now I run it once manually before I go to bed.

Your Dad and I are not the best house repairers or fixer-uppers. I think we're happier as tenants than as homeowners. But I love our little house. 

Is there anything that you did fix, that with hindsight you kind of miss?

I've had to think long and hard about this...and the answer is "no." I don't miss anything that's gone (like the ugly bathroom sink you always hated that was in the bathroom you and your brother shared). 

The big fix was when we put in central heat and air. Unfortunately for you and your brother, it was after you'd both moved out (which I'm sure you're well aware of and have never forgiven us for!). Before then our only cooling from the blazing Central Valley heat in summer was a pretty lame swamp cooler in the hallway. I remember how you used to sleep under it on the hottest nights. 

And so that's another thing I do not miss: that swamp cooler!

Berries on Mara's driveway