BERRIES!

[bunn]

I picked some rowan berries last week, which are now in the freezer, becoming milder and more edible in flavour before undergoing transformation into rowan jelly.  There seems to be a bit of a shortage of crabapples this year - most of my favorite crab trees are completely fruitless.   I think this must be down to the dampness of the spring, though it may have something to do with the lack of summer sun, too.    But I did find one tree that had clearly managed to seize exactly the right moment to flower, so I have enough crabs to make jelly.

My apple trees - well, they have *some* apples on them. But not many, and they are rather small crabby efforts: I fear we will not get many eating apples this year.  I think I have to put it down to a bad year.   It's been a bad year for figs too - just not enough sun to ripen them. I've only had three ripe figs all year, and none of them were really dark and sweet.

Blackberries, however, are everywhere, and I filled half a tub with them on this evening's dogwalk before Yogi plastered herself in mud and we had to go and find the pond.   A lot of the blackberries are flyblown already - all this rain definitely favours the flies - but a walk down the west side of the hill into the sunset found enough worth the picking.  Going back up the hill, the sun had fallen below the level of the mounded clouds overhead, so a golden radience flooded in over the shoulder of Bodmin moor, illuminating a goodly number of berries that I had failed to notice on the way down.

I wonder about the flies that lay their maggots in blackberries, are they a special sort of blackberry-fly, or are they generic flies just taking advantage?

Comments

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I love gathering blackberries!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

There's that feeling of triumph when you spot the perfect berry half-hidden under a leaf, and the feeling of achievement as you go home all scratched with your box of black-purple booty! Plus, free food!

[firin.livejournal.com]

They don't grow uncultivated over here, so I really do miss that pleasure and achievement. It's really not the same when you have to pay and then wander down perfectly assembled lines of blackberry bushes.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I remember adaese's Californian cousin's surprise, ?ten years ago, when adaese made a blackberry tart with wild blackberries.

[firin.livejournal.com]

I think it's because the heat here kills plants which are not cared for, watered etc. Even a few consecutive days without rainfall can do it and this is of course very likely throughout the summer period. Anything growing wild gets pretty stunted during this season.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Cultivated blackberries don't taste quite the same either - bigger, more consistent, and not quite so sweet, or at least, the one I grew in my last garden the berries were like that. That was variety 'Oregon Thornless' which does have the advantage of having very pretty leaves and no prickles, but I don't think I'd grow it again.