A Season For Blackberries.

 The edible kind.

Last year there were hardly any. Wherever I looked ( we all have those secret places! ) there was a dearth of blackberries. Gosh, hardly enough to pick at and not enough to even attempt to make some jam.

Well, not this year. The berries are out enforce. Walking along the various by-lanes and paths of Eisenberg one can't help but stumble across shrubs of them. Lovely. Nice and big berries that are so easy to pick off, well apart from escaping the sharp thorns all around them. I try not to pick too many on my walk as I don't know if I am picking from someone else's patch. These things matter in the rural order of life.

Luckily our garden is blessed with an abundance of blackberry shrubs. Annoying when they have to be pruned but rewarding right about now. And sweet they are too.

Yesterday after my walk I went and picked a handful to put atop my muesli, but naturally I also had to sample a fair amount to check if they were sweet enough! At one point our new feral lodger came to join me wondering why I was stretching up among the thorny twigs. Honestly, I do think she shook her head my doings!

Anyway, I couldn't wait to have my breakfast. These berries made such a lovely garnish in my muesli bowl and tasted even better. As one does while eating breakfast, I was reading online at the same time and therein lies the rub...I was so occupied that I merely looked at my spoonfuls on the way to my mouth but forgot to look at the bowl itself...

When I had eaten the last spoonful I took the bowl to the sink and on the way I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. What gives? Well, serves me right...on the  counter where I had put them earlier a couple of ants were zig-zagging across it in giddy delight. Oh well, a little bit of a detour from my vegan diet assuming that there were more than those couple of ants on my berries.

Biggi