Last year there were four times this many!!!
Well, that’s mama, for sure. She’s out there because it’s August and the blackberries are popping out all over the place but you have to get to them fast, mama says, before everyone and his mother strips the bushes! And that’s why you go alone. Unless someone is watching you with binocs, you’ve got the patches to yourself.
But—Today, she tells, me, everyone and his mother DID get there and her favorite patches, thought to be hidden and private, had nothing on their branches but the new berries coming up. Well, so be it, August is not over yet and there will be another crop.
Blackberry picking is not my gig—my fur gets all sorts of stickers and things in it, and I don’t really know (yet) how to roll the berries off the vines with my little paws, the way mama does. She uses her fingers, that is, not her paws. And you can’t go berry-picking in the morning if the sun is coming up in the east and the berries have the sun behind them, because you’ll be blinded by the sunlight and the berries will be practically invisible in dark patches. If you go in the evening, the wind has died down and it is very still and the berries have had an extra day of warmth and then they just drop off the vines into your waiting container.
But what there is up there, too, in those berry-covered hills, is wild fenugreek, which mama says can be used in niter kibbeh, a clarified butter spiced with cardamom, cinnamon, fenugreek, garlic and other savory ingredients that mama made when she was going through her African phase. She made niter kibble for me, haha.
I think that particular cuisine might come back to her kitchen, now that she’s discovered herbs in the hills!
Wait a minute—I thought herbs was a CAR!!! (Mama just told me HERBS, not Herbie!)
Oh, those look tasty. Too bad the bushes got picked before your mom got there. We hope she has better luck next time she goes.
Let’s hope she doesn’t get STUCK so many times!!! I’m not goin’, that’s for sure…