the urban thicket
Aug 24, 2009 
There is one thing the summer fog can’t suppress around here: the annual blackberry glut. I heard this story on NPR about blackberry picking in Seattle right as I was noticing the thicket of dark berries cropping up alongside the roads and paths in parts of the still-wild Presido here in San Francisco.
So this weekend, I headed out with my sister and her family. The thing I realized about urban berry-picking is that it makes passers-by really happy. Like giddy-little-kid-happy to see you with a pail or bag in hand, plucking away, with the berries making that telltale plonk, plonk. People stopped us and gasped, “Blackberries, really? Can you eat them?” or asked what we were going to make, or told us they were going to come back and pick their own too. Or just walked away smiling, with their own handful.
My niece pointed at one older man who passed and said, “Look mama, a farmer!” Maybe that’s because he was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a red shirt and smoking a pipe, like all the farmers in her books. But just for the briefest of interludes in our urban lives, we were the farmers. Wading into the brambly bushes and clamoring to get the darkest and heaviest-looking berries as the juice stained our fingers magenta and the thorns scratched our arms if we got too eager.
The woods were so hushed, it was almost as if they were in on our secret. It all reminded me of this lovely poem, even though it’s about raspberries:
Picking Raspberries
by Lisel Mueller
Once the thicket opens
and lets you enter
and the first berry dissolves on your tongue,
you will remember nothing
of your old life. You can stay
in that country of sun and silence
as long as you like. To return,
you have only to look at your arms
and discover the long, red marks.
You will have invented pain,
which has no place there.
After we left the blackberry world, we took our loot home. My sister’s family made blackberry ice cream. As I simmered my stash into a syrup for homemade Kir Royales or ice cream, I realized that I made the same thing this time last year in Ireland. But it's a fate I don’t mind repeating.
blackberries in gather
Reader Comments (13)
Hi, Haven't been visiting here for very long, but just wanted to say hello. I love blackberrries, and love picking wild ones but my husband thinks it a foolish thing to do - what about pesticides and stuff? And I just think that if they are growing in the wild its all the more likely there won't be any pesticides and stuff. Being a botanist I have no doubt that they are blackberries and therefore not dangerous. Perhaps he doesn't have that self-assurance about his blackberry identification skills!
i haven't had fresh picked blackberries since vermont -- granted they were from rouse's point new york, but oh how i love blackberries -- was just reading about san francisco's blackberry glut in david lebovitz's book the perfect scoop the other day...enjoy!
At the end of each summer my aunt picks the blackberries outside her Bainbridge Island home and makes pies. I'm rarely there to enjoy the treat but your story helped me remember how much fun it is, and how good it is too!
This is a beautiful post. Wish I was there.
What a great post - I use to pick blackberries as a child in the summer heat of Alabama... my Mimi had a great blackberry thicket in one of the lower pastures... I am back in Alabama now after years in the Northeast - your story made me smile and hungry for those times and blackberries... thank you for posting -
looks like you came away with quite the stash. i found some berries not long ago, but this past weekend they were all picked clean.
This is a lovely post...thoroughly enjoyed it...thank you!
Ah, one of the best parts of summer winding down! I'll be picking in Maine this weekend. When making pies, I think adding cinnamon and lemon juice to the berries really brings out the brambly goodness in the filling. (I have my Grandma to thank for that wise enhancement!)
Kelly - we've got a glut up here in the Pacific NorthWest too. We've been picking for a couple of weeks now but so far none have made it home to be made into crumbles or fools ( my English roots are showing with that one). Thomas always has a tummy full of blackberries after picking (why we don't have any that come home), and purple hands, face and clothes! But it is such a part of our summers here - its Thomas's third year picking - now he is a more active participant. The first year he sat in his stroller, pointed at the berries and then ate pounds of them!
Hi
What a lovely post.
You mention making balckberry ice cream and I was wondering how you do that.
I dont suppose you have a recipe do you?
Magic Mummy
www.frugalfamily.co.uk
Hi Magic Mummy,
My sister was the whiz with the ice cream. She didn't have an ice cream maker so she simply thawed vanilla ice cream until she could stir it. Then added blackberries and refroze. It was a big hit with my niece!
Both the photography and this article makes my stomach hungry for blackberries! And you so speak the truth: why is it passerby's get so excited for you when you pick the little black clusters of goodness?? It's so true! They do! Just this morning, in fact, on my walk I had to stop and sort out a handful of blackberries. The people who passed me all smiled so beautifully and knowingly - such a freshness to the usual "how do you do's". Loved the article.
That poem is a perfect description of the hours I can spend in the raspberry thicket across the street from my house during our all too brief Alaskan summers. Lovely post.