Black balloons

Everyone is lamenting the close of summer. Kids back in school, a chill in the air, the return of rain before the winter drudgery. To this, I say first of all, What summer? and second, A late blackberry season never hurt anyone.

It's no secret I brainwashed my husband, packed everything into the car and stole my mom's first and only grandchild (right after she decided to remodel the kitchen in preparation for the extra pumpkin pies we would now get to enjoy as a three generation family) to move 3,000 miles across the country. Again. (Sorry mom!) But do they know that I did it all in the name of the luscious pacific northwest berry season? They probably wouldn't believe me even if I admitted to it. (Which I am currently not doing.)

This has been a monumental year for me, and in its wake, I keep forgetting that we had such a disappointingly short summer. In April, on the day Isabelle was born, it snowed. As well as the next day. People thought I was still pregnant in May because it was still sweater weather, and I simply wore her under my jacket.

In June we broke out the short sleeve shirts. In July we dug through our closets for shorts. They lasted a week. Now I've gone back to wearing hoodies again (oh how I love the fuzziness cool weather brings), and the wrap is a welcome extra layer.

Who could possibly hate the end of summer when it means that wearing Bella is now cozy and relaxing again. We get to snuggle back under the quilts when we wake up to find them tossed aside in the middle of the night. And, returning to our routine of frequent walks now that it's cooler, we've just started collecting the first round of blackberries in September.

Our street is lined with blackberry bushes. Thousands upon thousands of them. The invasive bane of everyone's existence, minus me and the goats. Yesterday with Dave's help, we took home several pints of berries fit to burst. Today we went back for a few more, but not many made it home. My usual Pick one, eat one mantra goes out the window when each berry is sun sweet and warm like a pie fresh out of the oven. If it falls off the bush, or stains my fingers as I grab for it, it's definitely too soft to bear the weight of its peers in the box, and thus must be eaten immediately.


Despite this overabundance, I have never met another berry picker, or even anyone who acknowledges the fact that the entire street is overrun with free fruit every year. I feel like I'm committing some cardinal neighborhood sin. Theif. Those are not you blackberries, they are not for picking. Heartened by Sweet Juniper's post on Urban Apple Pickin' (and not that I moved cross country for the produce or anything...), I hop over the fence, Bella strapped to my front, eying the plants as she does for anything green. Sometimes people stare at me (they'd do that anyhow, just for having a baby strapped to me, but now I am suddenly self conscious as if I am stealing precious goods or endangering my daughter amongst the thorns), but sometimes I get a hello.


I have yet to see anyone else hop the fence for this free candy. Kids mill home from school and pass them right by. Couples out for an afternoon stroll pay no heed to the gems dangling over their heads, vines clawing at their feet for attention. Sweetness beyond sweet within an arm's reach. I want to shout out to each person, offer them what I have picked just so they will remember to enjoy what is in front of them. Look, nature's popcorn! Free pie filling! Free scone berries! Free happiness, right here, if you want to stand with me and watch the bees and enjoy the spiders, and did you see that?! That was a frog sitting on that blackberry leaf, a frog! But still they go by, and that leaves all the guilty little pleasures for me.