Blackberries

[bladespark]

Yesterday, as I mentioned, I went blackberrying, and made cobbler. Today I went again and just ate berries. I was on my way back from picking up my prescription at the clinic, and my path passes two large berry brambles. One is closer to home, and is a proper bramble, and has been cut back from the road to form a bit of a hedge, thus it is good for picking in quantity, as you bend over less, and that's where I went yesterday. The other is new, so the brambles are all low to the ground, but it's along a ditch, so it's all green and the berries are huge. And it lies directly along the path that runs by the road (no sidewalk in that area) so it's very handy, I just had to take two steps off the path to start picking.

I ate myself nearly sick, there were so many berries and they were so good. Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo gooooooooooooooooood! Huge, fat, juicy, perfectly ripe, I mean OMG I have seldom had blackberries that good. And I couldn't help but notice that despite being barely a yard from a path worn by daily walking, they showed no signs of regular harvesting. In fact they showed no signs of being picked at all!

This led me to wonder why. They're there, they're huge and juicy and enticing, they're not out of anybody's way, really. Why has nobody else been eating them? So I entertained myself the rest of the way home with theories.

1. People are just that lazy, and two steps off the path and then bending over a bit is too much for them.

2. People are just that used to seeing blackberry bushes, because they're everywhere here, and so they haven't actually noticed that there are good, juicy berries on this one.

3. People are so incredibly busy that nobody has ever had time to stop and pick the berries.

4. People think that only children and furries pick berries (how does that go? In the forest, digging holes and eating berries?) so adults don't want to look like a child or furry, and thus they don't pick them.

5. People don't know that blackberries are edible in the wild, they think that only the storebought kind (which holy crap! are like $4 for a cup of tiny, sour, half smashed berries!) are the only kind safe to eat.

6. People are so afraid of catching salmonella or some other nasty disease they won't eat a wild berry when they can't wash it first. (I nearly ate a ladybug that was on one of them, but I don't think ladybugs could give you diseases. They'd just make the berry taste really nasty and crunchy.)

7. Everybody now thinks that a blackberry is something that goes on a phone, so they don't even know what these are or that they're edible.

Anybody else have another theory to add?

Comments

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

The only blackberries I won't pick are ones by roads - if they're out in fields and the like, I'll pick them (and whinberries, a relative of blueberries) but I tend not to trust ones that grow near roads, for pollutant reasons.

[ekmahal.livejournal.com]

Over here, blackberry bushes are classified as a weed (they're an imported plant and they rule over all very very rapidly.)

Thus, it's quite common for any bushes the local council has noticed to be heavily doused in plant poison.

We don't pick berries off roadside plants here :(

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Well, they're weeds here too, but the only place where anybody bothers trying to get rid of them is on protected parklands, where there's concern for crowding out the native species they're trying to protect. They're EVERYWHERE, and they don't poison them. I'm not sure that works well anyhow, the things are ridiculously hardy.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Heh. I suppose technically these are near a road, but they're not directly on it, and it's a residential road anyhow.

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I'm not even sure napalm works...

[lanabananaotter.livejournal.com]

They're magical berries that ward off muggles.

You, being incredibly magical, are not affected by such spells.

[scribe-of-stars.livejournal.com]

The Illuminati want all the blackberries. It's part of their plan...mostly because their leader loves them and wants them all to herself. So they put all sorts of subliminal messages through the media that urge people not to pick them (among other things).

Hey, if it's not true, how come they're trying to break down my door and take me aw

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

People like their food so... sterile these days. It's kind of sad

of course, I don't go climbing in bushes for blackberries because they muss my clothes, i send beloved/a brother/random young cousin I have enslaved instead.

[lightgreendryad.livejournal.com]

It's along a sidewalk. Most people don't walk on the sidewalk, but they drive their cars so quickly past it anyway that they don't care and don't notice.

Hooray for being a pedestrian.