Blackberries

     Monday afternoon found me in one of my happy places, actually a good briar patch.  I don't know why but for some reason I seem to be content out in a field picking blackberries. Is it because I think it is the southern thing to do? I am really not sure. I do know that picking berries is something I can remember doing all the way back to my childhood. We used to have these gallon ice cream buckets from K&B that we would take and pick blackberries in the deep ditches in our neighborhood. All of the neighborhood kids would do this every spring. We would take our bounty home and wash them . Some we would eat in a bowl of milk with sugar and the others mom would make into a cobbler made with Bisquick. Years later she would come across the most divine cobbler recipe, so much better than that old Bisquick one. Her cobbler recipe is  so good that my friends from school will actually fight over it if they know it has even entered my classroom. My husband requests it all the time .
     I can remember one particular berry picking trip in the woods near my grandmothers house. My cousin Cherie and I along with some of our other cousins went and picked berries in the woods. Our fathers went with us and on the way back Cherie was walking ahead and stepped right over a snake laying across our path. I think it scared the adults more than all of the children. But for some reason blackberries and snakes seem to go hand in hand. I have only encountered one in the many time that I have gone picking. The only thing I saw was the end of his green tail slithering away. Now when I go I usually take a yard tool with me , for my protection , but it also serves the purpose of pushing the prickly vines away so I can get to more of the berries.

     I spent Monday side by side with my husband picking the sweet berries . We picked in silence most of the time , not because we didn't have anything to say but because where we were was so beautiful and peaceful. We gathered enough for me to put up 6 quarts in the freezer but that is not near enough ....those berries are still calling my name. I have unbaked cobblers with names already earmarked on them...friends who need them because they need a little comfort , because they have begged me to make "the cobbler", because the sweetest thing  to see is  my husband piled up in his recliner with our four year old in his lap while they share a big bowl of warm blackberry cobbler and vanilla ice cream. Are you salivating now? Are the fields of blackberries calling your name? They are mine. I will go back next week with my yard tool and enjoy my time of quiet reflection out in a field of berries.