I had only vaguely thought about them this year until my husband, daughter and I were on a walk on the trail below our house a week or so ago, and we spotted a couple thick patches of bushes I hadn't noticed before. And, the berries were pink, indicating that they would be ripe in two to three days. Well, that did it.
We love fresh berries. They don't taste anything like the cardboard pellets you buy in the store. We eat them for breakfast, in various desserts, over frozen yogurt, or just plain.
Since we moved to our house five years ago, I have picked berries every spring along the highway behind our house. Then, too, I became somewhat obsessed, but it is worse this year because the patches we saw on the hillside of the path were secluded, and I could pick without being ogled and found out, kind of like finding a swimming hole nobody knows about.
For the several days it took for the berries to ripen, I secretly worried that someone would see those patches, too, and beat me to the goods. When they began to ripen, I donned my long jeans, long-sleeved shirt, hat, socks and shoes, doused myself with Absorbine Jr., the Midwest's summer perfume, and hopped on my bike at 6 a.m. My heart raced in anticipation as I peddled like Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France, daunted by the idea that someone might beat me to the berries.
No one was around, and I felt like a thief in the night as I filled my plastic bag, occasionally give a furtive glance through the trees down at the path, and I made away with my booty, never seeing a soul. What an adrenaline rush! (It never occurred to me until now, as I write this, that no one else would want to go to all this work for a few berries.)
Berry picking for me is like panning for gold. I spot a bush loaded with those sweet black morsels, and I become jittery and clumsy with delight, and I can't wait to get at 'em. At first, my eyes scan the bushes, darting from one large berry to another, and I don't know which to pick first, so I kind of go from one bush to the next and back in a frenzy. Then, I tell myself, "You've got to be smart about this. You're wasting precious time, here. Pick one bush clean and then go to the next, methodically. You don't want to miss any."
This method works well, but I am not happy until every ripe, or semi-ripe berry is gleaned from every bush in every patch. I have noticed that some of the best berries hid under the leaves, and to get them all one need to bend down and look under the bush. I don't know what I would do if someone else was picking with me. It would drive me insane, and I could possibly turn violent.
Several times I have stepped in a hole or on a fallen log, or gotten tangled in the nest of vines, and lost my balance, coming close to tumbling down the hill. That is why I always bring my cell phone.
My father's words resound as I enter the long grass. "Snakes love berries, too, but they are just as afraid of you as you are of them, so make sure to make plenty of noise and take a stick and move the brush in the path ahead of you. That will give them time to skedaddle before you move in." Apparently, my great grandmother Lucretia was bitten by a rattlesnake near her home on the bluffs near Prairie du Chien. Luckily, a neighbor helped, removing what poison he could from the wound and preparing a bucket of mud for her to soak it in. She had a raging fever for a few days but recovered fully.
Lots of animals and insects are attracted to berry bushes, especially bees. A few days ago I was picking and I felt something on my thigh. Thinking it was a prickly berry branch, I brushed it away without looking, and a needle poked right through my jeans. I looked down, and a very angry looking bumble bee flew away. He could have at least buzzed first and warned me, but I guess I was in his territory disturbing his pollination ritual, and he wasn't going to stand for any of that. It stung for a bit, and then subsided, so I kept on picking. It is now an ugly yellow-purplish bruise, a well-earned battle scar of my expedition. (Sorry if that's TMI.)
Every once in awhile, I get too anxious and, OMG, I drop a berry into the brush. If I have a clear view of it, I pick it up. But, most of the time it is lost to my bag of booty, and I brood over my fumbly fingers for a minute or so, giving myself a sermon for being such a klutz.
Today when I was picking, pardon me if I don't reveal just where, but I discovered some deer beds, several oval shaped indentations in the grass tucked in amongst the bushes and brush. What a perfect place to bed down: soft grass, shelter from the rain because of the oak tree cover, and berries within reach without getting up.
Deer eat berries, right? (I Googled
it, and they do.) Why would they eat the plants in my house yard when there are such beautiful berries to eat? Maybe they're getting back at me for stealing their food from their house yard?
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