Blackberry Picking

Behind the cabin where my friends and I stayed this weekend there were lots and lots of blackberry bushes. The two of us that arrived early had the assignment to pick blackberries to go on our waffles for our Saturday morning breakfast. My friend came prepared with an ice cream bucket suitable for blackberry picking. We had left it in the van when we unpacked the night before and so I went and got it when we decided we were ready for our adventure. I handed it to her and she said, "You should get your own container so we don't have to stand next to each other while we pick." Now I know what she meant was it will be easier for both of us if we aren't trying to pick into the same container, but I thought it kind of sounded like she didn't want to have to get too close to me. I enjoyed giving her a hard time about this comment for the rest of our weekend.

Here is my friend "carrot" with her very own, very special and extremely personal blackberry picking bucket before she filled it up with lots of delicious blackberries.


I use to spend time in my grandpa's raspberry patch when I was young, but I had forgotten how stickery berry bushes can be. They even have stickers on the back of the leaves and all those thorns hurt. A LOT!


I think it is nice how fruit ripens at a varying rate. In nearly every bunch of blackberries there were some ripe berries, but also some not quite ripe berries along with some that were still green. That way you don't have to pick all the berries at one time and figure out what to do with them all at once. Pretty ingenious, huh?

My friend was quick to notice that while there are thorns on most of the bush, the fruit is always located at the end of the branch. If you use caution, you can avoid most of the prickles. We both decided this was a sign of a loving Heavenly Father, who while he had to create the thorns still tried to make things as painless for us as possible.


We also discovered that picking blackberries is kind of a messy job, but the juice washes off pretty easily.


When our friends saw all the blackberries we had picked and heard how much fun we had doing it, they wanted to have their own blackberry picking experience. So we picked blackberries on this morning too.


Some of us in our pajamas.

You have to be careful when you pick blackberries though because you never know what kind of wild animals you might encounter.



These ruffians actually picked berries 9 years ago in a blackberry patch further up stream, but this is the memory that always comes to my mind when I think about picking blackberries. Obviously they enjoyed wearing the blackberries as war paint more than they enjoyed eating them.

Not me. My favorite part of blackberry picking was enjoying the fruits of my labors on my yummy waffle for breakfast. It was fabulous!