Fairly warm and dry the weather has been — and this is a spot that catches the sun. All the same, surely that can’t be a fully ripe blackberry in the first week of July? But it is. Or was, as shortly after taking the shot I ate the fruit, and very nice it was.
I’m very sure this is the latest in any given year that blackberries have featured on this blog. They really should be gone by now, and the majority of them are, having long reduced themselves to shrivelled, dusty-looking remnants. But for some reason or other, these ones are hanging on in there. I wouldn’t eat them, though.
The insect was after the nectar. The flower wants its pollen moving on. I wanted the blackberries, the seeds of which will in turn be distributed. We all get something out of the transaction.
Each year I have done this a picture has appeared of the blackberry bounty, and that provides a chance to measure its position in the year. They are early this year, probably unsurprisingly, but not as early as 2014. Either way there has been a sudden ripening (blackening) of thousands of them in the last week or so. I went hunter-gathering today. The stump in the background is Heptonstall Church, by the way.
Ah, free food. Come to daddy.
They’re early this year but then again so has everything been, since February. And who needs barbed wire when you have a stand of brambles to protect your property.
Stayed below freezing all day today, the coldest day since Moscow back in March. Beautiful weather however, a glorious winter’s day. These brambles have made a break for freedom above a stone wall up the road from our house.
Why would anyone in Britain buy blackberries at this time of year? Why would anyone equipped with a freezer and a few hours on a September morning have to buy them at any time of year? Particularly ones shipped in from Mexico, which, unbelievably, I have seen on offer in our local stores in the middle of a British autumn. I cannot think of a more ridiculous illustration of how we have utterly f***ed up food production and its relationship to our long-term survival.
I also like blackberries. Particularly in a pie.
Being 42 