Berries - Planted By the Birds

There are all sorts of wild berries in our area - the birds often help to plant them - and we get to enjoy them.

Blackberries are rampant here - if you aren't careful they will overtake you.  They will grow anywhere and everywhere - the little seed eating band fruit eating birds will see to that.  You have to be ever vigilant, lest your garden be overcome with them.

They are plentiful and delicious.  Some years the berries are huge, and some years, normal sized - but always tempting and scrumptious

This is our favorite place to pick them - no, I'm not going to tell you where this is.  There is an abandoned house on this property and the vines have overtaken the fence line and hang down into the driveway - a perfect spot for picking.

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the back bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

Mary Oliver

Some years the bushes are white with blossoms.  On a good blackberry picking year we gather several gallons of them.  I spread them on cookie pans and freeze, then bag them up for the freezer - to make jam and pies and cobblers all through the year.  Add some blueberries and raspberries and you have a delicious Bumbleberry Pie.

And some years, not so much.  These blackberries are actually Himalaya Berries, brought to our country for experiments by Luther Burbank in California. He wanted  to cross them with the native blackberry and make a more prolific plant - the seeds of the Himalaya Berries were eaten by birds and in just a few years the  plants spread from southern California to British Columbia in Canada.

The berries grow in vast patches - the mounds (about 5 or 6 feet tall in this photo) in front of the trees are common sights.  Some people water the bushes extra if they are on their property to give a consistently bigger crop.  We have one friend that placed sturdy ladders across the tops of the patch of berries like the one above, so they could crawl over the top and get to the best berries.  They are very sturdy plants, with massive canes.

  

And Elderberries - bright red on green.  You can dip the flower heads in batter and deep fry for the best fritters around.

In early summer the berries turn bright red and almost seem to glow.

If there is space - the Elderberries will grow into huge thickets, or they might appear right next to your house in an unexpected spot - they can grow to about 5 feet in one year.

Thimbleberries - ahhh the Thimbleberry - looks beautiful and tastes like - nothing.  A very bland berry - mostly good for eating right off the bush, though some people have been known to much Thimbleberry jelly, one of the prettiest and clearest red jellies there is.

Thimbleberry blossom - almost a berry.

The blossom of the  Thimbleberry is bright white and easy to spot

Salmon Berries.  These grow also in Alaska.  We had a fence of them along one side of our yard when I was growing up.  Though you didn't have to have them in your yard - there were lots in the woods too.

They have the prettiest blossoms - and are one of the first berries to bloom in the spring.  There are orange/yellow berries and darker, clear red/orange berries - both taste the same, and make fabulous jelly.

Early blossoms this year - pink and delicate.

Wonderful free berries, planted by the birds.