Berry Picking Lessons

Guess what I found right here on my own country mile?

And look how I had to cover up to survive the hordes of mosquitoes.  Fortunately, it wasn't a very hot day when I discovered that all those shrubs on the east side of the house are saskatoon bushes.  I knew we had some of these shrubs at the corner where the land slopes so sharply that I can't even stand there, thanks to my chronically inflamed tendons.  "The squire" would bring me a few juicy morsels each year to nibble and I would wish that there were more so that I could make a batch of jelly occasionally.  There's nothing more delicious than saskatoon jelly on a bagel or toast.

It happened that as I gazed out of my study window a few days ago, daydreaming when I should have been writing, I noticed little points of reddish purple and deep blue-purple on some of the shrubs only a few feet away from the window.  Curious, I braved the insects to investigate and realized that those points of colour were berries.  Surely, I thought, there would be enough for a few desserts; sweet, ripe saskatoons are wonderful on ice-cream!

The more I picked, the more I found.  I exchanged the small plastic margarine tub I had grabbed for an ice-cream pail... and filled it almost half full.  But the branches with the thickest clusters of berries were at the steeply sloping spot where I couldn't go.  I was so grateful the squire came to my rescue and picked almost another half pail full from those bushes.

Don't they look good?

While I was picking, I was flooded with childhood memories of berry-picking excursions with Dad on warm summer afternoons.  He'd load us all into the huge, old Country Squire station wagon (of course, it was the latest in family transportation then) and we'd drive along country roads, looking for saskatoons or wild raspberries.  Each child had a plastic container fastened to his or her waist with an old belt so that both hands were free to pluck berries from branches we had pulled into our reach or Dad had pulled down for us and showed us how to hold them with one hand, pick into our containers with the other, and then release the branch so that it would spring back unharmed.

And, while I'm definitely older than I was then, most of the berry-picking realities I experienced then were exactly the same now.  The best looking clusters are always just out of reach.  And if you drop one, it's only a waste of time trying to find it.  A few not-so-ripe berries in the pail aren't bad; they will actually continue to ripen for a while after they're picked.

When you decide you'll rely on the breeze to keep the bugs down, the breeze will die as soon as you are committed to picking. The mosquitoes will always find the one spot you missed covering with repellant (nasty stuff but necessary out here).  Bites on your hands and wrists are the itchiest of all.

And I learned some new things as well.  I realized that these bushes had been here all along but hadn't flourished until the wind storm a few years ago thinned out the forest and made it possible for them to benefit from extra sunlight.  I wasn't happy to admit it but the loss of my beloved trees had led to something good.

My cane made a very handy tool for pulling out-of-reach branches toward me.  My beagles were both a help and a hindrance.  Baxter sat faithfully nearby, sniffing the breeze and I had no doubt he would alert me if a bear were to choose my bushes for a mid-afternoon snack. Coco romped around chasing scents, toads, and moths and tried to eat my berries from the pail every time I had to set it down for a minute. 

Then there were so many good memories of Dad patiently admiring what a good bush I'd found, how cleanly I'd picked, and how many I'd picked.  While we were picking, Dad, a life-long nature lover, would tell us all about the birds and the wildflowers we saw; it seemed he knew everything!  On our weary and mosquito-bitten drive home, he'd tell us what a good job we'd done and predict that Mom would be so pleased with how much jam or jelly she could make for us to enjoy in the winter and that we would enjoy it so much more knowing that we had picked the berries ourselves.

And sure enough, she always did and the jam or jelly was always delicious.