Blackberry Season

It's that time of year when I find myself pausing at the edges of vacant lots to reach in for these juicy black treats. I almost always go home with a few wounds from their sharp, aggressive prickles but it's worth it. Their unique and delicious flavor carries me back to childhood every year.

Guest Post by Rosie Long

Today's lovely photos were taken by my daughter who, while having been featured on Victoria Daily Photo has never before contributed her own photos. These were taken on her IPad. She and her father picked the blackberries. The apples and tomatoes are also out of our garden. It was most definitely a fruitful day! - Fern and Rosie

Blackberries!

Victoria has been enjoying an incredibly beautiful September and that means blackberries galore! On a trip out to Saanich, on the Lochside Regional Trail we found a bounty of beauties. - Fern

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.