Before breakfast, Jack and I take our morning walk. If it’s fairly dry underfoot, we do a loop in the wood. Yesterday we had a light breakfast in the wood.
There’s a small area in the wood where the trees are less dense and the undergrowth is abundant.
Jack and I have been keeping an eye on this area for a while; yesterday our monitoring paid off.
A while back, amongst the undergrowth, I noticed some brambles with flowers on them. I was skeptical as to whether any fruit would develop. A few weeks later, to my surprise, I saw that some small blackberries (red when small and unripened) had formed on the brambles.
Apparently this patch of the wood receives just enough sun for fruit to grow.
Checking on the berries yesterday, I was delighted to see some had turned black and were ready for picking — a forager’s dream come true.
While I picked a handful of delicious wild berries Jack waited patiently on the footpath…
anticipating that he would be rewarded for his good behavior…
with a share of the forager’s bounty.
Later Dan told me he has never seen blackberries in the wood. I told him it may be because Jack and I have eaten them all.
live. enjoy. repeat.