Mid 60s with a gentle breeze. A few horsetails of high cloud in a blazing sky. Going to be ice tea weather in a few hours.
This year’s wild blackberry crop is enormous and right on schedule. The dogs and I enjoy handfuls of sweet berries on our morning walks. I’ve so far done no serious gathering as I don’t have a stove to make jam or syrup (and a hotplate is too tippy). I’ll soon head out with a bucket and grab some berries for the freezer.
The dogs wait patiently for their share. They could easily gather their own from the low vines, and they do when I’m not picking. But the moment I stop to grab a handful they stop, stare, and wait for the meager share I dole out even though they could get more, faster, on their own.
No doubt there’s a message about the effects of the welfare system in there somewhere.
Though the berry harvest is exactly on schedule, the September spider crop has arrived early. I have to be careful when I step out my back door or when walking in places where vegetation presses close on the logging roads. Ick! To get a faceful of spiderweb — or worse yet, a mouthful of spider!
First sign of fall — too soon. What with the conspiracy of minor disasters that kept May and June so unproductive, it seems more as if summer should just be beginning.
I finished that one segment of ceiling Friday (pix later) and am now plunging in to delayed spring cleaning.
Pardon me; I must go tear the kitchen apart.
Blackberries, yum!!! One of the berries I haven’t been able to get established on my land yet.
Would it be possible to use bricks or something to stabilize the pan over the hotplate? Or find a friend who likes to can and have a canning party at their place?
Ellendra — Good luck with your blackberries! Though I know there are plenty of places where they don’t want to grow, the thought of trying to establish them somewhere gives me a giggle. Hereabouts they’ll come up in lawns, driveways, dog yards, and anywhere else they can get a grip. If not cut back annually, they’d close off roads in just a few years. But since they provide such — free! — bounty, I sure won’t complain.
Bricks around the hotplate. Great idea! And I wonder now that you mention it if furrydoc might want to go out gathering and get together for canning?
I usually pick up a stick and hold it in front of me when I walk through the woods this time of year, to intercept those spider webs.
Blackberries are the enemy. In fact I was just outside lopping off new sprouts in an area I am trying to suppress them. When hunting deer around here, hunters carry a pruner in their back pocket just to clip their way through the brambles when going through the woods.
My suspicion is the dogs stop because, more than anything, they crave attention and nurturing from YOU (and, perhaps, they don’t want the others to get more attention than they do).
The leader of the pack always gets first fruits.
I sure remember blackberry bushes. As a kid, I once crashed my bicycle into one. Wikipedia says there are prickle-free cultivars — not what I encountered, but that was back in the 60’s. Yep, used to just stop and pick them from the side of the road.
My goodness! No stove, and tearing apart the kitchen, in addition to doing the ceiling work?
I assume it’s possible, maybe even easy, to make blackberry wine. (I just did a quick web search – some easier recipes, some more involved ones.)
I love berries of all kinds… so I planted several here. Those I got were supposed to be good for this zone, but that’s not really true. The roots survive the hard cold, but little of the above ground growth. Fruit forms on older wood.
I would have had maybe a cup or two of blackberries alone this year — if it had not hailed (three severe storms and two smaller ones). The plants were nearly stripped of leaves, and many branches were broken or seriously damaged – again and again. I’m looking at 4 lonesome berries that may, or may not ripen. Depends on whether or not the clouds of grasshoppers manage to miss them, and leave enough growth on the rest of the plant to feed them. Lost all of the gooseberries, currants and raspberries, what few there were. The concord grapes never even tried to produce a flower.
Just one of the prices I pay for living here, I know. Just makes me sad to read about others awash in a sea of berries… and find the pitiful little 4 oz. tubs of half ripe/half rotting berries in the store priced at $2.50 or more.
So, when you curse your blackberry vines (at least mind don’t have thorns), remember that one person’s curse might well be another’s blessing. 🙂 I’d be tickled to make you all the jam and preserves you wanted from that fruit, if I could keep just a few of them.
If you want a little low octane alcohol from your fruit, crush it, strain it, and mix with some kefir watergrains. Be sure to use an airlock, and don’t let it sit too long or the grains will be killed. I do this with bottled juice sometimes and it is wonderful – besides giving you a wealth of healthy organisms and the full benefit of all the vitamins and minerals in the juice. No need for a stove. 🙂
“My goodness! No stove, and tearing apart the kitchen, in addition to doing the ceiling work?”
jed — I may have given the wrong impression. My “tearing apart the kitchen” is merely a major clean-and-rearrange. Blessedly, the kitchen was one of the two rooms (along with the living room) that was livable when I bought the house (after being de-molded). It didn’t come with a stove, but that I can live with for a while.
The next big project is tearing off the final misbegotten and rotted addition (about 4×12, so no huge deal), replacing at least one more of the beetle-eaten foundation beams, and beginning to do something about the godawful bathroom. I’m crossing fingers to be able to start that this fall and make significant progress by next summer. But for the hardest parts of that I’ll have handyman help.
The foundation is the one really dauntingly major-major remaining project — the only one as large as the roof you guys so generously helped fix. But I’ll just have to tackle that gradually, as I restore the rooms above each problem beam. It’s going to be nasty any way you look at it, but believe me, it won’t be me lying on my back in the mud doing that one. It’ll be a handyman.
As to the kitchen, I’m still reveling in having one mostly functional working space.
MamaLiberty, I had never heard about water kefir before you mentioned it. Live and learn. I looked it up and found a nice website about it (http://zoevblog.com/2010/03/17/what-is-water-kefir-and-how-to-make-it/). Looks very interesting; I’ll have to try it. Thanks!
Claire, did you catch this article? It is a howler:
http://www.unz.com/mwhitney/trumps-triumph-billionaire-blowhard-exposes-fake-political-system/
Paul, re your link to the unz article – I enjoyed that exchange, and thought, “How refreshing, to hear it actually spoken, out loud, in front of people.” I also enjoyed his response to the question about 4 of his companies going bankrupt. Speaking of the investors who ended up on the losing end he said ‘these are not your grandmothers losing their savings. These are sophisticated people. They know what they were getting into.’ (or words to that effect) I can’t wait till the next “debate” to see what he says next.
I agree that the system is broken, but I wish Trump could have come up with a better example than “Hilary attended my wedding.” So what? Of course she did; people regularly attend weddings and other social functions of business associates with whom they’re not necessarily friends. But it would be meaningful if he had said that she got the State Department to approve some deal of his that was in trouble, or used her influence with the government to get him a contract or something. Getting people to “do something” for you isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
As to his bankruptcies (which, please note, were not himself personally, but specific individual business ventures), real estate deals go bankrupt all the time. “Bankruptcy” doesn’t necessarily mean liquidation; the most common form is Chapter 11, which is merely a reorganization. And yes, sometimes the creditors lose money in bankruptcies (especially if they’re unsecured), but I would be very doubtful that the secured creditors in his bankrupt deals lost much if anything. And, as he says, those investors aren’t widows and orphans; they’re sophisticated institutions (banks, hedge funds, etc.) who are prepared to take the occasional loss; it’s a cost of doing business (that’s why they carry reserves). So while I have lots of issues with Trump, his (business) bankruptcies are not on that list.
You know you are welcome to my stove, kitchen and stuff.