Blighted blackberries, all you can eat
August 5, 2005
In the valley, all of the climbing berry bushes are suffering from blight. Blackberries, raspberries, rusty and yellow leaved are making the locals depressed. My neighbour Jean-Louis tells me, ‘Take them all, I just can’t stand the sight of it’. ‘You want me to take all of your blackberries?!’ Even when I offer to bake him a blackberry pie he makes it clear that he just wants the blackberries out of his life forever. As if to spite the bush he tells me that he’ll never grow blackberries again.
Maybe it’s because they’re not wild that they taste a bit bland, maybe it’s the over-watering, maybe it’s the blight. It’ll take me a few summers to know the difference, but I climb in the tangle to duke it out with the wasps, who are for some reason unusually passive this summer. Maybe they also can’t stand the thought of a crop of blighted blackberries. They’re just buzzing around and don’t seem to mind me shooing them off the dull and heavy berries. ‘Just please take them away,’ they’re saying in wasp-talk.
Speaking of dull and heavy, afternoons at river’s edge we just loll about and let the sun do it’s sun thing, chez former folly of the sun king.
debra at 9:00 | | post to del.icio.us
Hi Debra,
Great stuff…the writing.
dad
Comment by dad — August 6, 2005 @ 1:30