Mûres

The mûres (blackberries) out in the vineyard are beginning to ripen, but they're not very big. I don't think our summers are hot enough long enough to produce big juicy blackberries.

A blackberry stem arches away from the main bramble.

But still, depending on the year, we can actually pick enough to make a pie. The closest patch to us was recently mowed down by the town, so we have to venture out around the edges of the vineyard to find some. There are some brambles in the woods next to our house, but getting in there to pick berries is a bit difficult.

I remember a few summers, years ago in California, when we would drive up to the Sierra Foothills to our friend Sue's house for the weekend. Her long dirt driveway (it's since been paved) is lined with blackberry brambles, and so are some of the edges around her rather large property. She has to fight with them every year to keep them from taking over, and it's a chore.

But in mid summer the berries ripen and Sue spends many hours out there picking. She freezes a lot of the berries and has them at hand all through winter.

On the days that we were there to help, we wore long sleeves and jeans to protect our skin from the thorns while picking, and often the temperature flirted with 100ºF (nearly 40ºC). But the berries were worth every discomfort, in pies, in jam, or just by the handful.