picking | little home by hand

The blackberries are ripe throughout the woods and on Sunday we went picking.

It’s scratchy business, the bushes are thorny and stinging nettles grow everywhere.

But so rewarding (sorry for the crappy picture, my camera functions were off and I didn’t notice til afterwards).

I’m planning to make blackberry syrup this year because we’ve still got jam from last year’s blackberries (we only got around to making it in spring). But we need to go picking at least once more.

The elderberries too are ripe but I’m not going to pick any since I still have a bottle of syrup from last year and it’s too rich to eat pure anyway, so it will last a long time still.

The berries are all ripe much earlier than in the years before and there are lots and lots. The cool, wet summer seems to have been good for them.

I’m typing this up all in a hurry before work. I usually have two evenings a week to myself to blog and go through my reader, but since we started apartment hunting these evenings are now filled with looking at apartments. This evening we’ll be looking at another one.
I’ve more tops and stuff to post and blogs to read, I’ve yarn I’m dying to start on and another dress cut out and waiting to be sewn up. I’m putting all my hopes on saturday 🙂

Late summer is the time for picking blackberries and raiding the woods for goodies.
This year was no exception though with the constant heavy rains we’ve been having it was hard to time our picking.
We live in a world of plenty and if I wanted to I could buy all the blackberries and apples and such easily at the supermarket. But they would be grown who knows where and probably full of pesticides (or so I imagine). Hardly anybody here is aware that by just going into the woods there too is a world of plenty. This little orchard is in the middle of the woods, man made, but left to fend for itself. The fruits are there for the animals and for people willing to pick them (I do not by any means approve of trespassing on private property and picking other people’s fruit!)

There is more than enough for every creature.

Blackberries and Boysenberries too grow and thrive in huge rows of bushes everywhere, far off the streets and fumes and pesticides.
They are scratchy of course (the blackberries) and picking them is a little work but it’s fun and rewarding.

We found a dragonfly enjoying them as well 🙂

The elderberries too are ripe at every corner and I plan on making elderberry syrup this year which is supposed to be a good cough medicine!