Raspberries are great and everybody loves strawberries. Blueberries are a bit bland but delicious too. Huckleberries and salmonberries are also local favorites. BUT, for that real ecstatic black purple juice jolt that hits those atavistic hunter-gatherer genes where they live, nothing beats wild blackberries. So sweet, so tart, and so difficult to pick. As well as a bag of berries, an afternoon's picking is likely to leave you with numerous small punctures and scratches. In fact, the biggest, most luscious berries, like the one above, always grow in the middle of the patch. You can see them but the tangle of thorny brambles makes it impossible to reach them without serious blood loss. It's OK - they're for the birds.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
For the birds
Raspberries are great and everybody loves strawberries. Blueberries are a bit bland but delicious too. Huckleberries and salmonberries are also local favorites. BUT, for that real ecstatic black purple juice jolt that hits those atavistic hunter-gatherer genes where they live, nothing beats wild blackberries. So sweet, so tart, and so difficult to pick. As well as a bag of berries, an afternoon's picking is likely to leave you with numerous small punctures and scratches. In fact, the biggest, most luscious berries, like the one above, always grow in the middle of the patch. You can see them but the tangle of thorny brambles makes it impossible to reach them without serious blood loss. It's OK - they're for the birds.
3 comments:
Greetings!
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I am so, so with you on this vibe, Benjamin. The blackberries you harvest for yourself are the perfect prize. Our street had some loaded canes hanging over the sidewalk from the nearby vacant lot, until the street crews cut them back. (You would think they could wait till after the season was over!)
ReplyDeleteWhen I was kid living in Illinois, my parents a place in the country that they called a "camp". We used to go there on weekends. The property was full of wild blackberry plants and my sisters and I would explore and come home with scratches up our arms and purple all over our faces. This is a great photo, and thanks for the memories.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully and mouthwateringly written, image just gorgeous. I'm a blueberry girl, but I love blacberries over ice cream
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