Monday - Harvest
Mar. 20th, 2006 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, the rain was washing away winter to prepare everything for the first day of spring. Apparently, Springtime in Houston wanted to start off with a shower. I start my day the same way, so I understand this impulse.
It has felt like Spring for awhile now in Houston, to tell the truth. My peach trees have been in bloom for the past couple of weeks, with delicate pink flowers that will soon turn into hard little fuzzy peaches. When the peaches first appear, they are the size of a pea and they wear the petals of the flower around their middles like little brown tutus. By the time each peach is the size of a grape, the tutu falls off. By this point, the peaches already smell like peaches if you put your nose right against one and inhale. When no one is looking, I like to rub the baby peaches against my face; they already have their peach fuzz and their skin is wonderfully soft. In the next month, they will turn from dark green their ripe shades of pale peach with red accents and their flesh will go from rock hard to slightly yielding to your touch. They are deliciously sweet right off of the tree, but most of them are destined to be cooked into cobblers since there is no way Jeff and I could eat them all. Most of the cobblers will be donated to good homes.
The dewberries and blackberries are also in bloom, with lacy white blossoms on dark green vines. A dewberry is a wild berry that is a cousin to the blackberry, but it tastes tart and feral compared to its sweet relative. They are powerfully tart off of the vine, but they make a very good cobbler when combined with obscene amounts of sugar. People who aren't used to them don't always care for dewberry cobblers, but for those of us who grew up on them they are something to look forward to all year round. When I was growing up, they were all dewberries and no blackberries growing around me. A few miles up the road from where I live is a commercial venture that allows people to pick their own berries (strawberries, blackberries and raspberries) and thanks to this orchid and with the help of the local birds, wild blackberries can also be found, but not in the quantity of the indigenous dewberries.
To pick dewberries, you have to really want them. The vines are thorny and mean and don't give up their fruit without a fight. Even on the hottest day, you should wear jeans when berry picking, because the vines will reach out and wrap themselves around your legs and flay the skin of off them. There isn't much that can be done to spare your hands; if you wear gloves you can't feel the berries to make sure they are at optimum ripeness and you risk crushing them. The best berries are hidden under the leaves of the vine (the ones getting too much sun tend to dry out). You have to find a stick to move the leaves out of the way to see the berries sitting on the vine like dark purple multifaceted jewels. When they are perfectly ripe, they will practically fall off into your hand in an almost seductive manner. If ever a fruit was saying "take me," it's a berry, juicy and fat and hot from the sun, dropping into your fingers and begging to be put in your mouth. While the fruit is willing and practically whorish, the guardian vine is not and as you try to pull your hand back with it's warm tart treasure, the thorns will snare you and try to make you drop it. By the time you are finished, you almost can't tell the juice stains from the blood stains on your hands. Your forearms will bear dozens of scratches and rips from the thorns.
I never saw these scratches on my mother; she paid her dues with the vines as a girl and she had four children to tear themselves up gathering berries for her when she was grown. Until recently, though, I had no children of my own and so I have had to pick the berries for myself well into my 30's. My son is still too small to be any help, but in a few years I will train him to pick berries along side me and then for me. I'll teach him to love cobblers and let him know that a few scratches are the price you pay if you want to eat them. It's a family tradition, and I have every intention of passing it on.
It has felt like Spring for awhile now in Houston, to tell the truth. My peach trees have been in bloom for the past couple of weeks, with delicate pink flowers that will soon turn into hard little fuzzy peaches. When the peaches first appear, they are the size of a pea and they wear the petals of the flower around their middles like little brown tutus. By the time each peach is the size of a grape, the tutu falls off. By this point, the peaches already smell like peaches if you put your nose right against one and inhale. When no one is looking, I like to rub the baby peaches against my face; they already have their peach fuzz and their skin is wonderfully soft. In the next month, they will turn from dark green their ripe shades of pale peach with red accents and their flesh will go from rock hard to slightly yielding to your touch. They are deliciously sweet right off of the tree, but most of them are destined to be cooked into cobblers since there is no way Jeff and I could eat them all. Most of the cobblers will be donated to good homes.
The dewberries and blackberries are also in bloom, with lacy white blossoms on dark green vines. A dewberry is a wild berry that is a cousin to the blackberry, but it tastes tart and feral compared to its sweet relative. They are powerfully tart off of the vine, but they make a very good cobbler when combined with obscene amounts of sugar. People who aren't used to them don't always care for dewberry cobblers, but for those of us who grew up on them they are something to look forward to all year round. When I was growing up, they were all dewberries and no blackberries growing around me. A few miles up the road from where I live is a commercial venture that allows people to pick their own berries (strawberries, blackberries and raspberries) and thanks to this orchid and with the help of the local birds, wild blackberries can also be found, but not in the quantity of the indigenous dewberries.
To pick dewberries, you have to really want them. The vines are thorny and mean and don't give up their fruit without a fight. Even on the hottest day, you should wear jeans when berry picking, because the vines will reach out and wrap themselves around your legs and flay the skin of off them. There isn't much that can be done to spare your hands; if you wear gloves you can't feel the berries to make sure they are at optimum ripeness and you risk crushing them. The best berries are hidden under the leaves of the vine (the ones getting too much sun tend to dry out). You have to find a stick to move the leaves out of the way to see the berries sitting on the vine like dark purple multifaceted jewels. When they are perfectly ripe, they will practically fall off into your hand in an almost seductive manner. If ever a fruit was saying "take me," it's a berry, juicy and fat and hot from the sun, dropping into your fingers and begging to be put in your mouth. While the fruit is willing and practically whorish, the guardian vine is not and as you try to pull your hand back with it's warm tart treasure, the thorns will snare you and try to make you drop it. By the time you are finished, you almost can't tell the juice stains from the blood stains on your hands. Your forearms will bear dozens of scratches and rips from the thorns.
I never saw these scratches on my mother; she paid her dues with the vines as a girl and she had four children to tear themselves up gathering berries for her when she was grown. Until recently, though, I had no children of my own and so I have had to pick the berries for myself well into my 30's. My son is still too small to be any help, but in a few years I will train him to pick berries along side me and then for me. I'll teach him to love cobblers and let him know that a few scratches are the price you pay if you want to eat them. It's a family tradition, and I have every intention of passing it on.
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a few scratches are the price you pay
Date: 2006-03-20 09:36 pm (UTC)Re: a few scratches are the price you pay
Date: 2006-03-20 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 10:05 pm (UTC)I seem to recall wearing gloves to pick berries, but they were thin gardening gloves. That stick serves another purpose, as well -- to scare SNAKES away!
Back in my lean teen years when Daddy was un(der)-employed, we spent WEEKS picking berries for jam. I R A X-pert dewberrier. So, when ya' wanna go THIS year? :D
no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 10:34 pm (UTC)I would love to taste this cobbler of yours, I would even help pick those dewberries.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 02:57 am (UTC)There are some wild rasp/blackberry bushes at my in-laws' farm. I had my first experience with them a year ago; I think I had more juice on me than what was left in the berries I tried to pick. I finally said "ferget puting them in the bowl" and started eatin; em right off the vine. Yeah... good times.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 06:23 pm (UTC)