Berries and the better life

Today was the inaugural day of berry picking season - I have a patch of cultivated and organically grown berries (though not organic in origin) that were given me by a special friend. You know it's a special friend, when she gives you a 24 berry plants.

I picked one a few days ago, and it was good. I picked one yesterday, and it was good. Today I picked eight, and they were luscious. It's their second year, and so they should bear nicely.

Afternoon crept by today. It felt like Friday all day, and when it's Thursday, but feels like Friday, it's a slow day and week and it's time for it to end. The sky was blanketed lightly by deep clouds and rain has been imminent most of the day, while it also appeared that the sun would be let through intermittently. It was, but overall remained gray.

The bus dropped me in the rain and I enjoyed the wet grass on my toes during the fifty-yard walk to the house. Rain was gurgling in the gutters and so I changed the buckets under them to be sure and capture as much as I could to water with next time it's dry.

It is 72°F right now, and after a couple weeks never dipping below 80 during the day and topping out at about 103, it feels like a reversion into spring, the season that is surprisingly still with us. I wasn't going to check the berries, but I saw a gleaming red one from afar, then looking closer and deeper, saw more, and found that carefully pulling back the large shading leaves that I had eight ripe ones on two of the five varieties in this patch. The reds were ripe, but a little translucent pink still - good enough for me. The two ripe golden ones were... well, golden, but with a slight pink blush to them, which is how I know they are ready.

It is important that I distinguish between these berries and the one's I've managed to choke down all winter. Any of you who regularly buy berries in Holy Foods or other such fine stores will know that, though they are tasty treats in contrast to the snow outside, they are no comparison to berries picked, oh, 45 seconds earlier. Or even a day earlier. Fresh, bush ripened berries are unequivocally one portion of the recipe of a better life.

My family has been enamored of wild New England blueberries ever since I was too young to pick them, but expected to nevertheless. In New England, we don't mess with them, doing the the equivalent of injecting botox to satisfy Texans, like is done with Chevy Suburbans. No, we're pretty well satisfied with a 5/16^th inch berry that tastes astounding. We picked them from a friends farm where he did not cultivate per se, but simply provided pretty nice conditions and a good occasional fire to get them started again as well as protection from bears and birds. They were low bush too, and we could pick with modified cranberry scoops. We found ourselves with about 20lbs in a box in about 20 minutes, into which, perhaps were I older, I would certainly have bathed. But I was young and naive.

Berries of all kinds - 'duda' (in Romanian) or шелковицы (in Russian)- mulberries - are delightfully plentiful, so much so that they stain the roads under the trees, and yet we don't harvest them. I lived near several trees and used to pick a few on my way home from work during the season. There were red, black and white ones on my trip, so I had a colorful treat and a new experience.

I have wild strawberries growing in my yard, but they are truly wild, growing like weeds, and sadly, they have no taste. It's odd that when I have occasionally picked a tasty looking one, how revolting it is to find it has no taste. Some people don't like mulberries for the same reason, but they do have a light, sugary flavor, though anemic compared to raspberries and blueberries.

The better life that I am so fond of pursuing, includes berries, berries grown near by, berries that grow wild, berries that I can crush for color and juice as well as the treat they are on my morning oats.

I hope everyone is inspired to pull off the road and get some... carefully please.