Welcome to the jungle. I’m swatting away determined wasps while daintily picking blackberries for my grandkids. They wear little sun hats — the children, not the wasps — and are heavily gooped in Coppertone.
At least one of them is crying at any given moment, which is exactly what I would do in the situation if allowed. Instead, I reflect on how life keeps offering me FREE lessons on living well. Take today, for example:
• Stop and smell the roses and eat the blackberries, but not the other way around;
• Spend time with the people you love, even when they are little and sticky and cry a lot; and
• Good things don’t come easy.
Blackberry season is an important reminder there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Every summer on 91原创 Island there they are: acres of delicious sweet berries to gorge yourself on.
Go ahead: jump in! Mind the giant, sharp spines. Hope you like insect stings, because wasps and bees are mad for the stuff. Keep an eye out for the spiders and snakes that prey on the stinging insects.
Oh, and look out for the bears, equipped as they are with protective fur coats and two thousand pounds of angry muscle, the better to eat all of the above, especially you.
No wonder somebody is always crying.
British Columbia is home to four varieties of blackberry: Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus), trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus), highbush blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis) and ARGGGHHH! blackberry (Rubus damnitthathurt).
The most common blackberry here on the West Coast is the Himalayan blackberry, which actually comes from Europe via the Indian subcontinent, but was misnamed during a passport stamping error at Ellis Island.
Himalayan blackberry was brought to North America in 1885 by Luther Burbank of Santa Rosa, California using seeds he imported from India.
Burbank really, really liked the abundant berries, even though they just weren’t that into him. By 1945, the relationship was over; Himalayan blackberry had spread up and down the 91原创 coast, and is now found across most of our province.
The blackberry escaped cultivation and became an invasive species in most of the temperate world because it is so hard to contain. The Royal B.C. Museum notes the main spreader of the blackberry is people.
Its superpower is based on its deliciousness. It quickly gets out of control, with birds and other pooping animals — especially people — eating the fruit and then spreading the seeds.
We tend to ignore the fact that the blackberry is highly flammable and a common ladder fuel for wildfires due to the plant’s dry leaf litter and skeleton-spike canes. Instead, we focus on how good the berries taste, and work to make sure the plant is never more than six inches from our picking fingers.
Of course, the blackberry is never six inches away. It is always six feet away, separated from picking fingers by an impenetrable wall of very sharp, very nasty spine-covered stalks that bring Emperor Hadrian to mind.
Botanists, a green-coloured variety of scientist, typically describe the Himalayan blackberry as long and fulsome with a compound berry, and include other interesting botanical facts such as the fact that it is a perennial plant that bears biennial stems; the polygonal stem grows vigorously to a length of four to 10 metres; the leaves are palmately compound; and it’s completely covered in fearsome thorns up to 1.5 cm long.
I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but that last fact strikes me as being key to one’s general approach viz. blackberries.
That is to say, perhaps botanists should lead with the bit about the fearsome thorns, and maybe throw in some capital letters and exclamation marks: FEARSOME THORNS!!! Four to 10 metres long! Palmately compound leaves! What are we paying these guys for if not to protect the public? Also, are we paying these guys?
Which brings me to the important question that haunts all those of good conscience at this time of the year: How much should I pay my grandchildren to pick blackberries under the hot summer sun while I sit on the back deck and enjoy a refreshing Czech lager? I know what you’re thinking: Dave, blackberries are free — no need to pay!
Some people, such as people who like to grow species of plants without, say, fearsome thorns, consider blackberries to be the backyard equivalent of Russian soldiers in the Donbas. That is to say, not supposed to be there, and very costly to displace once they are.
Cutting the canes to the ground and/or burning blackberry thickets are ineffective removal strategies, but have the advantages of a) temporarily giving your property that post-apocalypse look every wife loves; and b) setting the entire Island on fire. Poisoning the blackberry is laughably and dangerously useless, bad as it is for bees, birds and barbeques.
In truth, all removal strategies are viewed contemptuously by the blackberry. Sure, bring your best shovel and dynamite to the battle, but it will only make them more angry, like swatting at picnic wasps.
According to botanists, the most effective removal strategy is to never, ever plant them in the first place. The second-most effective strategy involves not botanists but astrophysicists and complicated rocket science to transfer the persistent blackberry into the infinite cold vacuum of deep space.
If you don’t have a friendly astrophysicist close to hand, you’re going to have to learn to live with blackberries, by which I mean give up on growing anything except blackberries.
That reminds me of one last free life lesson from today in the blackberry jungle: You are not what you think, you are what you do.
So daintily pick the blackberries, swat away the wasps, and delight in the company of the little sticky crying people in your life. Lunch is not free, but it is delicious.
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