I love the way birds visit the garden. I encourage them with food and plenty of shelter. In their turn they repay me with amusing antics, birdsong and a degree of pest control. And they perch in the trees and shrubs and deliver seeds from the berries they have been feasting on in the nearby hedgerows. This leaves me with an endless battle against dog roses, hawthorns and most of all brambles. For most of the year brambles are a nuisance; catching at clothes, scratching at skin and embedding thorns in un-gloved fingers bold enough to try to pull them up. But early autumn is different. Now I am grateful for those defiant few which have taken root so deep in thickets of shrubs or bamboo that they have proved indestructible. The berries are gleaming, plump and ready to be picked. I gather them in handfuls - if I wanted more I would have to take a basket and forage among the hedges bordering the footpaths between the fields and would soon have enough for any culinary project. But these few would be enough to add to my breakfast porridge or heat just until the juices run then sprinkle with sugar and a flick of Five spice powder to make a warm topping for ice cream. Either way the scent of a bowlful of fresh blackberries is one of my favourite aromas and if they are soft and juicy enough they may never make it as far as the kitchen anyway.
I have until this evening to enjoy this particular pleasure. Folklore has it that from the tenth of October onwards it is unwise to pick blackberries as the Devil spits on them all then. That aside, country wisdom reminds us that other foragers besides us will be harvesting as well and the berries will likely be infested with insects and mould.
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