An Evening’s Wander

Honey and I arrived at the train station from two separate cities at the same time last night and I suggested we took the long way home to pick blackberries! I had lived in this neighbourhood for five blackberry seasons and used to see each day’s progress.  Being further away this year, it was a sort of guessing game for timing.  As we began the usual blackberry path, I was disappointed to see that the usual haven had been chopped back and wouldn’t be providing this year.  There were plenty of other bushes and ‘stands’ to check along the way and moving from plant to plant, I realised that the reason foraging/gathering makes me feel so peaceful is that it is the perfect exercise in mindfulness and thankfulness. Besides the free food, what better reason to love it!

I think the peak was about a week earlier than usual, which meant that we have missed it by about 3-4 days (judging by the picked over ‘fruit-connecting parts’ and the leaves, etc).  There also seems to be a smaller crop this year because there was a lot of only partially set fruit.  This could be due to the warm dry weather we had in July.

Anyway, we got enough to make two round crumbles (we gave one to the neighbours, after borrowing sugar for the topping!) and freeze about a cup. Honey was the one to make the crumble while I gathered elderberries spied just down the street from our new place!