Blackberry Picking: The Poetry of Summer

A couple weeks ago, I learned of a friend's abundance of blackberries in her yard, so I took my army of blackberry pickers (my in-laws and my husband) out to the Murphy family property for some free summer fruit.  We picked and picked until we were worn out from the heat and our hands were tired.  We could've picked all day and still not exhausted their huge crop of berries. 

When we got home, I had a few gallon-sized bags full of berries, ready to go in the freezer until I need them for blackberry cobbler. We also enjoyed eating berries with dinner for the next few nights or in yogurt for breakfast.  Isabelle calls them "babies." The poor kid isn't great at discerning or pronouncing Rs, but it makes for lots of laughs as she asks for babies ("beebees") with her dinner.

I can't think of a yummier, healthier breakfast than organic blueberry yogurt topped with homegrown berries.

Our own tiny crop of blackberries is finally starting to produce, so we've starting enjoying our own little harvest.  We only have three or four stalks, which we transplanted ourselves a few years ago, when friends moved and offered us their plants.  These stalks have the biggest blackberries I've ever seen in my life.  Check them out.

I promise, they're not shooting up steroids in the backyard.  They're Apache blackberries, so they're thornless and naturally gigantic.

   

Every time I go outside to check our plants and see if any berries have "inked up," I think of Seamus Heaney's poem, "Blackberry Picking."  It was one of the poems I had my 9th grade students read and explicate every year.  I've included an excerpt of the text for you here, but do yourself a favor.  Instead of just reading the poem, click here and watch a video of Heaney reading it.  You're missing out if you don't get to hear the author read his own words in that fabulous Irish accent.

Seamus Heaney is the same Nobel Prize-winning author who wrote Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, one of my husband's favorite fiction books. 

Blackberry Picking (An Excerpt)
by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
for a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
among others, red, green, hard as a knot...

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre...

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.