Mist and Elderberries

[bunn]

Out on the hill this evening, I and the hounds were alone -  all the tourists and fair-weather walkers had been blown away by the wind or washed away by the rain.  You could only see a few yards through the blowing mist, all scented with the gorse-flowers and a faint hint of distant seaweed.

The leaves are mostly off the hawthorns on the hilltop now, so they make craggy dark shapes against the mist, with a faint hint of red where the haws are still clinging on.   The rowans are more brightly dressed in brilliant orange-red berries - even the ones that have otherwise lost their leaves are nude with red decorations.  It gives them a faintly Christmassy air which ties in nicely with the tinkling Brythen-bell tearing about invisibly somewhere in the mist.

Occasionally,  Brythen hurtles past close enough to be seen, and then his bell creates an interesting Doppler effect, which Az and I usually fail to appreciate as we are trying to make sure he doesn't crash into us.

A couple of days ago I noticed that there was a particularly generously laden elderberry tree on the path down from the old quarry, so I wandered past that way this evening.  Sadly, the rain began to come down in earnest while I was picking, so I had to trudge damply back up to the car park, accompanied by a mournful Az and extremely tragic and soggy Brythen, who kept trying to crawl miserably under bushes along the path to hide from the horrible horrible rain.

Brythen was so wet, he actually let me dry him with a towel!  This is a real leap forward.  He used to run away and hide upstairs while I dried off Az, due to his strange but compelling fear of towels.

Now I have 1.2 kilos of elderberries, and need to decide what to do with them.   I'm tempted to try wine-making rather than jelly for a change.

Comments

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

It sounded beautiful before the rain!I once wrote a story about elderberries.