I woke up Saturday feeling the need for a project.  Sometimes having something to work on and successfully finish can clear away frustrations you have in other areas of your life.  Places were you feel a bit powerless to change at the moment.  While sipping my coffee and sitting on my swing, I remembered my raspberries.

At the beginning of the summer, Jerusalem gifted me with a boxful of raspberry plants.  I should say re-gifted.  Her mother-in-law, Mary (notorious for her green thumbing) had thinned her own raspberries and gave them to her.  Since Jerusalem was right in the middle of selling her house and relocating, she didn’t want to plant them in a place she would soon be leaving so she passed them on to me.  And at some point this summer I plopped them into a forgotten over grown flowerbed beside the house.  It wasn’t the tidiest of places for them with all the weeds that had run a muck in the bed, but it was the best my busy schedule could do.  I knew they would need a support system sooner or later but at least they had their toes in some dirt and weren’t withering away in their pots.

So I finished my coffee jumped up from the swing and climbed the wooded hill behind our house.  Crossing back and forth, collecting fallen branches.  Branches twisted from a life tangled with a grapevine.  Forked branches knocked loose from strong winds or last year’s snow and ice storms.  Some covered in moss.  Some loosing their bark.  Back and forth, up and down.  It was quite the work out and cleared the mind.

I had no definite plans or instructions.  The trellis all came together very organically.  I started by make 3 A-frame like supports that would hold up a top cross piece and more horizontal pieces about half way up.

Most of the wood was hickory and quite hard so pre-drilling made it easier to get the screw in. I used 3 inch screws and attached the branches where they naturally wanted to lay against each other.    I wanted the trellis to have a very natural look as though it had grown up out of the ground along with the raspberries.

Finishing the trellis made me very happy and rushed away those frustrations at least for the day.

And the raspberries seem to like it too.