Luna is taking Becky and me for a walk down our dead-end road.
A car is approaching, so I grab Luna’s collar to slow her movement. She almost never pays attention to cars unless it is the black minivan with two dogs which occasionally turns onto the gravel lane across from our house. Then it is a back-and-forth bark-bark-bark and a useless attempt to catch the Black Dog Van as it rolls away trailing clouds of dust behind.
This time it is not the Black Dog Van but another neighbor’s vehicle. The car rolls slowly to a stop, and the passenger window opens. We have a brief “Hi-Neighbor” chat which ends with an offer: “If you are walking by our place, we have some bittersweet branches in the yard. Please take some for decorations. You know, it’s not really autumn without bittersweet.” We thank them and later in the walk, we collect several colorful red-berried, tangly branches to tote home.
The neighbor is right about autumn and bittersweet. I can still remember the many years my dad would drive to the rural area where he grew to find some bittersweet for the fall season. As fate would have it, Becky and I now live fairly close to where he grew up.
When we get home we put the branches on the deck table with the intention of working them into some sort of wreath. It’s the sort of project I like: A somewhat artsy/crafty challenge that is not too time-consuming or complicated.
One of Becky’s particular gardening interests is learning about invasive species. We know two species of bittersweet exist in the United States. The native species is American bittersweet and the other is often called Oriental bittersweet. It came from Asia in the 1860s and was introduced for, as a website puts it, “aesthetic reasons.” This is a common reason for invasive species to be here, attractive plants from somewhere else bringing unintended consequences.
A quick check revealed that the twigs on our table were the invasive type. The deep red berries are beautiful to look at especially in the gray and white of winter, but they are poisonous. The bigger problem, however, is that the vines crowd out native plants. When we are finished with the wreath, we will burn it. I should probably tell the neighbor what we learned, as well.
If one can have a list of favorite words, I suppose “bittersweet” would be on mine. I like that it is the name of a plant, but I like its other definitions, as well. The Cambridge Dictionary defines the word as something both bitter and sweet to the taste, e.g., bittersweet chocolate, or as something both pleasant and painful or regretful. Memories of Dad talking about going to the woods to look for bittersweet as if it were a traditional family activity is definitely a bittersweet memory for me.
I am also thinking of daughter Rachel’s emotions as she thinks of her oldest child Atticus who is away at college for his freshman year. Our family just got back from a short trip away, and for the first time Atticus didn’t go with the rest of us. Happy he’s in college now, but, still, bittersweet.
I think of autumn itself as a bittersweet time of the year. Warm weather and outdoor activities with friends fast becoming memories while the changes to fall and then winter make for a brisk and windy present reality. And soon, if I can bend the vines and make a workable circle, we will have a bittersweet wreath to remind us of the past and the future.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
