I do enjoy berries. They are super delicious, great producers and relatively resistant to disease. I’ve heard Japanese Beetles can be a big problem, but so far, that is one bug we thankfully haven’t had to deal with here.

Click the image for a large view

My biggest problem is keeping up with production. And it seems to have come on even earlier this year. But everything seems about 1-2 weeks ahead of schedule. Or maybe I am behind.

I have also noticed, on occasion, that the rare berry has a strange grassy taste to it. Is Anne right in thinking that I am crazy? Maybe grassy isn’t right, maybe it’s chlorophylly.

There is a blackberry cache across the road and over the rusty barbed fence, just to the left of the “No Trespassing” sign. The lot across the way has been abandoned for quite some time. Medium-sized trees are growing right next to the foundation of the home that once housed a small farm family. No windows remain and the structure is probably somewhat dangerous. But the old house is not why we ventured across the road. Blackberries and Anne’s wild plum tree brought us over.

“I’ve adopted a tree!” Anne announced as she made her way into our house last weekend. She had been gone for over and hour and returned with another container full of blackberries.

“That’s nice,” I said picking a few juicy plump berries from her bucket.

“You want to see it?” She asked.

“Nah, I’m busy.” 

This reply never seems to work the way I plan. So we venture across the street with pruners and berry containers and the camera. Jake and Buddy follow – they have learned to pick berries too. Jake is very gentle while Buddy tends to strip the entire branch and later hacks up the thorns and leaves and probably the berries too.

Anne’s tree is the first stop. It’s small, but likely old for a wild plum. Anne trims the dead wood and shapes it up a bit. The fruits are small and only starting to ripen. But in a couple weeks, I’m learning to make plum pudding.

There are plums in plum pudding, right?

There is something awesome and magical about berries. It could be the little packages they typically come in at the store makes them more precious. We would need lots of little packages at this point to preserve that “good things in small packages” adage. And I am not all that into preserving adages. I’m more into eating berries. 

Most ripe right now are the black and red raspberries and mulberries. We planted the red, but the black and mul are just wild on the acreage. Our strawberries are pretty much done. If we are lucky we might see some later in the Summer yet. Still waiting for the blackberries and blueberries. They seem to be coming along nicely, but they are very young plants, so I might not be able to take a picture before eating them all.