The Picking is Easy

Raspberries are a summer crop—sometime in July in my town usually.  But picking them in summer is not my favorite thing.  They tend to hide behind the leaves, or if they are too ripe, drop on the ground to be snatched up by a waiting chicken just as my reach meets the berry.

No, my favorite time to pick raspberries is in the fall when the vigorous new canes have stretched to their max and still have enough energy to throw out a spray of honeybee-attracting flowers on the top foot of the cane.  These flowers turn into berries and ripen starting in September when everything else is slowing down.  They hang like tantalizing bunches of grapes, easy to pick and begging to be touched by hand and mouth.

So the first of the Things I get to do today, even before I look at the list, is to be in the berry patch, before the sun is fully awake and longing to kiss the fruit, with my container on my belt as I delight in the abundance of this harvest.  Picking is easy now.