Quintessential Summer

There are few things that send my nostalgia wheeling like picking blackberries.  Growing up with a bunch of cousins next door, late summer meant going down to the big bushes in grandma's cow field and picking big ol' bowls of berries to be made into cobbler.  Sometimes we got chased by cows (or at least we thought we were being chased) and sometimes the yellow jackets drove us off, but it was always something we did together.  City living has put this tradition on hiatus the past few years, plus the huge bushes of my childhood have long been mowed down.  This year after asking around, I found some bushes about a mile from our apartment in a field that so far has escaped urban development.

As I walked there, I passed an older gentleman with his tiny little dog who saw my pails and asked if I was going berry picking.  After telling him that indeed I was, he nodded to my t-shirt and told me that I should have worn long sleeves.  It was 80 degrees already that morning, so I thanked him for the advice and continued on.  Obviously he didn't know that the bushes only give up their sweetest, plumpest, juiciest berries after a blood sacrifice.  However, I do remember enough that I wore sturdy shoes and cropped pants to protect my knees.

I'm always making jokes about my monkey arms (yes, I do think they're abnormally long) but this time it really paid off.  The bushes were understandably a bit picked over, but with my long arms I was able to get those elusive berries, the ones that sparkle in the sun way up high and just out of reach, or at least they were when I was a kid.

So I listened to the Mama Mia Pandora channel on my phone, singing out loud because no one was around.  Or at least I don't think anyone was.  Perhaps some poor soul was out in their yard on the other side of the fence, wondering what all the caterwauling was about.  Perhaps another good reason for us to get a place without shared walls someday.  I picked to my heart's content, or at least until I started sweating profusely and needed to get home so that my honey could leave to go watch the football game.

 

Two scratches, a few drops of blood, a purple tongue/fingers and a couple of musicals later, I had a nice little pile of berries ready for storing.  I may or may not have a tummy ache now from the obscene amount of berries eaten.  After a nice rinse the berries filled up a jellyroll pan and were promptly popped into the freezer.  We normally use berries for smoothies, but I think that if I can go out and get some more I might give full reign to my inner child and make cobbler.  It just sounds right to celebrate the end of summer.