Jump to content
SASS Wire Forum

Blackberries - From the Christian Science Monitor


Subdeacon Joe

Recommended Posts

Quote

What we know about blackberries
That galloping sound? The rising darkness? Look out! Here they come!

August 1, 2018

By Murr Brewster
Western Oregon has a climate exquisitely suited for readers, writers, and blackberries, but the blackberries are the most successful. 

One of the easiest ways to spot a newcomer here is if she sees a sprig of what she hopes is a blackberry vine in her backyard and gets all excited. “You don’t want that,” I explain as forcefully as I can, which is to say with a spade and a spray bottle of a plant poison I won’t otherwise admit to owning.

Oh, but she does want that. Evidently, in certain parts of the country, blackberries are something you buy at a nursery and plant and nurture and cross your fingers over. Here in the Pacific Northwest, blackberries go thundering over the landscape and periodically you need to whack away at them to see if your car is under there. Of course, this blackberry is not native. The native plants are the ones at the edges of the blackberry thickets running for their tiny lives.

That’s how it works with invasive species. When you look at any given balanced ecosystem, you’re seeing the truce that all its inhabitants have hammered out over millenniums. Some new guy comes charging in with a whole new strategy, and the natives have no idea what to do about it.

Our Himalayan blackberry was introduced in California in the 19th century by Luther Burbank and soon appeared throughout much of the United States. Although it is perfectly plausible that it clambered over the Rocky Mountains by itself, mostly it was spread by seed. Birds spread seeds.
That is the polite term for what birds do.

So, in exchange for permission to exterminate sprigs on any newcomers’ property, I offer to take them to a spot out of town where the blackberries romp and gallop over the countryside like radio hosts talking over a reasonable man. There will be acres of berries in every direction. If they are allowed to root in the neighborhood, however, it is a matter of a few weeks before they have vaulted the fences and arched over your house. You’ll be watching a cat video on the internet, oblivious to the creeping darkness, and that will be that: Call 911; send out the goats.

Goats with machetes.

Blackberries are nothing to trifle with. I do like blackberry pie, though, and my husband, Dave, and I pick berries every year. He’s tall and has large stomping feet, which means he can get into the thicket pretty far and stand and pick in the same location for several minutes, but I worry. That’s plenty enough time to be ingested by the blackberries. If he doesn’t make a point of backing out every so often, he could be in there for good. Then someone needs to heave sandwiches toward the moaning sound until winter, when it might be possible to rescue him. But it’s a bother.

That’s what I explain to my new friends, but they look dubious and disappointed, and hesitate to give me and my spade the go-ahead. My house is right around the corner. It’s vulnerable.

“Let me get you a blueberry plant instead,” I say. “They do great. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

It’s money well spent.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I was a wee lad in California we had blackberries on my grandads property. Me an d my sister would pick em off the bush and eat em right there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lived in Everett, Washington for a while when I was a kid.  Ma would hand me a couple of buckets and send me out to pick blackberries.  Needless to say, I'd eat a bunch while picking, and never got tired of 'em.  Huge... rich... sweet... with SO much flavor!  Nothing at all like the scrawny li'l wild berries of California.

 

Back home with full buckets, and she'd empty 'em and send me out for more.

 

I'll never forget the fragrance of that steamy kitchen when she made dozens and dozens of jars of blackberry jam to be enjoyed year 'round.  Ooo....  butter and jam slathered on fresh, hot-from-the-oven biscuits... and for dessert after supper, blackberry cobbler!!  

 

Visiting Palouse in Redmond almost twenty years ago - he took me to some gun shop toy store.  After parking, he headed for the shop's door and I headed for the blackberry bushes at the edge of the parking lot.  ^_^

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Himalayan blackberry is an invasive that has long since taken over the Pacific NW, but it has one virtue that other invasive plants lack: it produces copious amounts of delicious fruit.

 

It's a good summer for them here this year and huge sweet berries are in every vacant lot, park, and woodland.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I moved to Oregon all the Oregonians raged against the lowly blackberry bush and their evil way of growing and spreading. No one I knew picked the berries.  Weird. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We've always picked them here. They were long-established when I was a kid, covering every vacant lot. We'd built tunnel complexes under the canes.

 

They of course are strongly armored with thorns. We'd throw plywood, cardboard, or ladders over the canes to get deep into the thickets for picking the berries. You could accumulate gallons easily.

 

Our native wild blackberry is a low-creeping plant, which thrives in burnt areas or at the margins of the woods. The berries are small and very good, but they are hard work, to find and to pick.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Allie Mo, SASS No. 25217 said:

Here, I only picked from the edges for fear of Rattlesnakes.

 

On a warm August back in ’87 I’d taken my then 14-year old cousin Joey deer hunting in the Mendocino Forest.  The kid had planned for this outing all year; he was young, eager, and excited.

 

One of the highlights for him came when he asked if he could strap on my Ruger Mk II while in camp.  I handed it to him and he strapped it on with a grin.

 

So late afternoon of our second day I told the lad I had a treat for ‘im.  “Follow me!” I said, and led him a couple hundred yards down a trail to a spring I knew of in a hollow choked with blackberry vines. 

 

“Enjoy!” I said, and waded in to start picking and eating berries.

 

The kid’s eyes lit up and he started stuffing his mouth.  They were small, but sweet and very plentiful.

 

Meanwhile, I was enjoying my snack, even though my boot and pants leg kept snagging.  Darned thorns!

 

After a few moments the kid started making odd sounds.

 

I looked at him, his cheeks were stuffed with berries, berry juice was dribbling from his chin, and he was going “Mmph!  Phmmph!  Glggph!”  

 

“Boy, don’t talk with your mouth full!” I admonished.  I knew that his ma had raised him with better manners than that.

 

Looking like he might choke to death in the effort, he chomped mightily a couple of times then swallowed hard.  A lump of blackberries went down his throat like a pig through a snake – no pun intended.  Then, spraying berry bits, he pointed and shouted “RATTLESNAKE!”

 

I looked down and was startled to see that the annoying vine that had been snagging at my boot and cuff was actually a very annoyed snake, futilely attempting to defend what he considered his personal domain from the giant monster.  He really wanted me to leave!  I obliged, and as quickly as I could, stepped out of the bush and retreated about ten feet.

 

The kid went in to action:  Pop  Pop  Pop  Pop  Pop  Pop  Pop  Pop  Pop  Pop !

 

“Here!  Hold this!” he barked as he handed me the pistol.  Astonished, I watched as he darted away along the trail.

 

Huffing, he returned about four minutes later, retrieved the Ruger, re-loaded and emptied a second magazine into the boggy blackberry vines.

 

That poor snake never had a chance.

 

I swear, you could’ve dried ‘im in the sun, then played him like a flute.

 

And ever since then, I’ve been wary of California blackberry brambles.

 

                                           Free Rattlesnake Cliparts, Download Free Clip Art, Free Clip Art ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When picking blackberries on a hillside in Pennsylvania as a kid I grabbed a very shiny tree root to secure my footing. As I grabbed the root I thought “That’s odd. Why is this root so shiny?”

As I grabbed the root it moved. 
I jerked to keep from losing my footing and me and a long copperhead took a tumble down over the hillside. 
When I landed I let go of the snake. 
He went one way. I went the other. 
I was so excited that I didn’t feel all the barb holes in me until later that day. I was seriously perforated from rolling down that hill of blackberry vines. 
 

Rules of nature:

Birds like berries

Berries attract birds

Snakes like birds

Snakes hang out where there are berries hoping to eat birds

Tree roots aren’t shiny

Don’t grab shiny tree roots ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I was a kid I'd stay with my grandparents as much as they'd have me.  A neighbor had a cow pasture with a good-sized creek in it & blackberries grew on the creek banks.  Nanny or Aunt Gerry would escort us kids to play in the creek & pick berries.  The smell of cooking blackberries (pie or jam) will put me back in Nanny's kitchen in a New York minute.  One of my younger cousins remembers getting eat up with chiggers after I took him blackberry picking - he swears it was AFTER his mama said not to go but I have to believe it was BEFORE she nixed it - can't believe I'd outright defy a direct order.  Anyway, yeah Allie & Pat - you definitely can get on a snake in a blackberry patch and, around here, chiggers are almost a given.  But sooooooooooo worth it.  Unless you have to spend three days in a pre-airconditioned car going home to Arizona.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619 said:

There's the beauty of western Washington and Oregon. No snakes (other than little garter snakes), no chiggers, no noxious bugs of any kind except the occasional yellow jacket. So all you get is the berries--- and the  thorns!

He found me the last time I was in Oregon. One also found me the first time I went to GFBTJL in So. CA.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Allie, if you are a yellow jacket magnet, you want no part whatsoever of the Southeast in late summer into fall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.