August Musing - 'Blackberry Picking'

"Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not."

~ 'Blackberry Picking' by Seamus Heaney,1939 - 2013.

Blackberries seem to have ripened early this year and there are only a handful of pickings left now from the bramble which grows on one of the garden boundaries. It has absolutely dripped with fruit this year. Although it isn't a cultivated variety it still yields some tasty fruits which sometimes adorn my morning porridge. The last of this year's crop will accompany some apples which I have just bought back with me from a short trip to see my mum. The fifty plus year old trees in her garden produce apples in abundance. Shame that I was traveling back home by train. Stewed apples, apple crumble ..... the jury is still out but I will be out soon be venturing out to pick the fruit before the birds can beat me to it. How do you like your blackberries?