River Brown

I was going to write Tuesday. However, I walked up the lane to pick blackberries. And I pulled out my watercolors, which I haven’t played with for years, and I doodled on the sketchpad.

The day went on, and since we have no Internet up here, I decided I didn’t want to dictate my blog on my phone. So I didn’t get to Tuesday slice of life.

BlackBerries. Toni Morrison says in Beloved, “blackberries is church.” As I leaned into the tall canes growing by the side of the irrigation ditch, I could feel it. The blackberries hang over in clusters above and below and huge masses, in all states of readiness. The picking involves leaning a little bit into the ditch. Then pull on a very dark berry that looks right — it has to be just so. There’s no point picking a berry that’s not soft and juicy ripe. (As I’m editing this now, I swear I will never dictate a blog post on my phone again.) Yes, there are the thorns, and the danger of slipping into the ditch, but there’s a beautiful Be Here Now silence in picking blackberries. Timeless.  Quiet.

The taste of a fresh berry off the cane is like no other  taste. They’re tart, but the juice is a bit sweet and very…

That’s where words and descriptions fail and one just has to walk down the sunny lane and find blackberries growing over the irrigation ditch and try them.