Can it really be this time of year again? Barely have the splashes of Hedgerow Jam been wiped from the walls, it seems, than it's time to start all over again. This headlong galloping of the seasons must be a factor of advancing years, I fear.
Still, I'm not complaining. Far from it. It remains my contention that the whole blackberry-picking-jam-making thing is one of the most sensually pleasurable experiences (in the public sphere) in life. I [b]rambled on about it here at self-indulgent length last time around. Suffice to say today that blackberries were picked on Sunday, arms were scratched, legs were stung, fingers were stained purple, insects buzzed, golden autumn sunshine bathed and all was, briefly, well with the world (or at least that tiny portion of it I call my own).
Next weekend it will be jam. Yesterday's haul has gone into blackberry and apple crumbles. So that's what we'll all be eating for breakfast (yes, breakfast), lunch and tea for the rest of the week. And only one of us will be complaining about that, and it won't be me.
(How did I manage to spawn a child who doesn't like blackberries?????)
4 comments:
Someone else (in Norfolk) is doing similar:
http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/henrygee/2008/09/14/comfruitation
I picked up two buckets of windfall apples yesterday but I haven't started on the blackberries yet. You spur me on!
I love bramble jam but there are so few blackberries round here this year and the few that have appeared husband has pinched for his blackberry whisky making. We are lucky, usually, to have a long hedge of bullaces (wild damsons) but there is not a single one this year because of the weather. I am reduced to chutney making with the apples and I don't like chutney! As I am in the minority on chutney I pickle away and reek of vinegar for my trouble. Jam making seems so much more civilised, and what's more important it goes with scones, which is a Good Thing as Pooh would say.
I was looking forward to a bumper crop of blackberries this year and I seem to have missed them. We have loads around here but either they have gone already or never materialised. Sloes also look few and far between (and the sloe gin is running out!). I think it satisfies some deep primeval instinct to forage for food - but not this year, by the look of it. AliB
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