Picky

Every morning now I go out and pick raspberries for our breakfast while birds sing and chatter in the trees above me. I sometimes get the feeling they'd prefer me to leave the berries for them.

All the blueberries the critters left 

After Saturday's discovery of blueberries by the pond, I googled how to pick them: if they are of varied ripeness in the same cluster, gently roll the cluster between your fingers and the ripe ones will fall off. So I waited a couple days to allow the berries to ripen a bit more. But when I went back to pick them, they were all gone.

Like so many other garden things, picking raspberries here is different from what I've done before. First of all, I'm walking down somewhat orderly rows instead rummaging through jumbles of bushes. The jumble method is how I'd always picked berries before — whether I was picking blackberries in the Berkshires, or along the side of the road while biking in France, or beside a hiking trail while backpacking in Colorado or in my and my neighbors' backyards in Boulder. But also, in Boulder, I had to wait a bit longer for the raspberries to reach the perfect ripeness. They had do be starting to turn a bit blue and loose their sheen. While in New Jersey, the berries grow a strange mold by the time they reach the blue stage. Here, I pick them when they're the color of grocery store raspberries. And they're delicious.

Of course the best rule is to pick berries that slip right off the stem. If you have to tug them at all, they're not ready. That is, if someone else doesn't get to them before you do.

Yesterday evening I scoped out the blackberry patch and saw a dozen or so blackberries that I planned to pick for my breakfast. But this morning, they were all gone. Whoever ate them in the night only ate the ripe ones. (How could they see the black ones in the dark?) It looks like I'm not the only berry lover around here.

Sunday

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Tuesday

Wednesday