GOBBLING BLACKBERRIES

"Blackberries seize the land, gobbling acres, blanketing banks, consuming abandoned farmhouses, and their Studebakers, and anything left alone in the rain for five minutes, or longer..." 

-Robert Michael Pyle

Forecast for September blackberries. Sun . Sun. With a side of fluffy.....

And blackberries. Farm blackberries. Roadside blackberries.  The colour of ripened chives.

Easiest thing to devour: Good vanilla ice cream, slathered in squashed blackberries, turning the ice cream purple red.

I stuff it into an ancient wine glass. The company wine goblets, turned into bowls.

With a lack of rain these days, the grapes are ripening like crazy. 

Along with the  blackberries on the hill that hang over the fence , over the dying daisies.

I've  even seen the racoons scarf them down. The blackberries. Not the daisies....

I 

I had one small graham crust pie shell. Usually I would make this for company. But this year, no company.  So I piled it with Bird's custard, whip cream and blackberries.

My mother would make this every September. A small pie for just the two of us. When school was just going back in session.  I'd come home  after a long hot day, and find her taking slivers from the pie pan. The innards oozing cream and custard. Berries falling onto our plates, as if they knew their fate was sealed.

We would sometimes have pie and tea on the steps of the old house. Just like that. Late in the day. In September when it was hot and then cold. Dinner would get lost and forgotten. The sky would turn. And there was still pie to devour.

The summer pots piled at the base of the steps. Waiting to be put away.

After pie. Of course. After the sunset.

"I ate mythology and dreamt..." -Yusaf Komunyakaa

Found this Peach Blackberry pie in the little freezer the other day. From last year. Amazing what you can find when you dig deep enough.

Nothing like fresh peaches combined with blackberries.  The flavour  is fresh and tangy and sweet.

Blackberries. September's  calling.

"And then Sam set to work, washing fresh blackberries that sat on the counter,She headed back into the backyard, Blackberries and raspberries grew wild and thick in the brambles that sat at the edge of the woods.." -Viola Shipman (the Recipe Box)

Photographs 2020

                                    CAT Plants on duty.....Rona and Spencer
 

A WHITE MIST

LA MER by Oscar Fingal O'Flaherite Wills Wilde

   (1854-1930) 

A white mist drifts across the shrouds

A wild moon in this wintry sky

Gleams like an angry lion's eye

Out of a mane of tawny clouds

The muffled steersman at the wheel

Is  but a shadow in the gloom

And in the throbbing engine-room

Leap the long rods of polished steel

The shattered storm as left its trace

Upon this huge and heaving dome

For the thin threads of yellow foam

Float on the waves

Like ravelled lace

*Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was a famous poet and playwright in London  during his lifetime. He was sought after for his plays. 

( His poems are in the public domain)

Photographs 2020 Discovery Passage and Mt. Washington Mountain Range...

 

Though the sun be not so warm....

SONGS of THE AUTUMN DAYS II 

                                      by George MacDonald (1824-1905)

And though the sun be not so warm

His shining is not lost.

Both corn and hope, of heart and farm, lie hid from coming frost.

The sombre woods are richly sad

Are thoughts in solemn splendour clad

Signs  that men grow old?

Their leaves are red and gold

Strange odours haunt the doubtful brain

From fields and days gone by

And mournful memories again

Are born, are loved, and die......

The mornings clear, the evenings cool

Foretell no wintry wars

The day of dying leaves is full

The night of glowing stars.................

George MacDonald  was a Scottish minister who wrote children's poetry and fairy tales. 

He was mentor to Lewis Carroll and wrote the "Princess and the Goblin" ....(Poetry in the public domain)

 Photographs 2020