Two months ago I was feeling hopeful and sentimental about spring and excited about the potential of the buds on my serviceberry. This week, I discovered that the supposed abundance of berries I was hoping to eat in June are now disgusting and inedible. The plant apparently has something called Cedar Apple Rust. Now the berries that were flowers that were buds full of potential are just hosts for a fungus preparing to spread.
I don’t know what this means for my metaphor. That the world still exists in 2021. COVID is still ravaging communities, politics continue to get weirder and weirder, and Black Lives Matter is still a controversial idea in some circles. So I’m letting it sink in that my plant has a disease. That disease will never really go away. Even if this shrub recovers, as I’m told it will, the disease is always around. The spores can travel miles to their next host. It’s unrealistic to believe that this will not happen again to my serviceberry, but I know there will be a spring that the spores happen to skip this place. This experience will make me significantly more grateful for a season down the road, hopefully, that we get to enjoy the berries, ripe and ready to eat.
Highways and Hallowed Halls 