LOGANBERRIES
This morning the air smells of minty toothpaste and traffic. It has elements of autumnal coolness in it as the sun begins to establish itself in the sky.
Alt text is not available to offer a suggestion for this week’s photo content. I say it is Ronnie having a photo shoot with some hotel curtains as background in order to add some interest and depth to some hurried photos of blackberries and raspberries.
In the back garden whilst marvelling at how a great forest of borage self-seeds each year I noticed that the autumn fruiting raspberries were beginning to ripen. This had me spinning me back in time to my nan giving me my first loganberry. I loved this large firm fruit with its clearly hollowed core and the way it brought my favourite taste of raspberries and mixed this with the depth of blackberries without bringing the tartness of those bramble fruits. I loved those hands that offered it to me and the love that always radiated from my nan.
Fruit seems to grow best in our garden these days. But a lot of it has ripened well ahead of time this hot summer. Recently we made a sauce out of the few blackcurrants that hadn’t spoiled in the heat and even though I added sugar and served it with sweet ice-cream it was very tart. Good to have used the berries though and to have grown them ourselves.
We have a number of rhubarb crowns newly planted in different places in the garden and the one in the shadiest, slopiest part of the garden is doing the best so far. In this dry weather it has the best chance of getting the benefit of the sparse rain and not drying out too quickly, and I think it will be well-established next season. There’s something about rhubarb crumble that delights me, and to have it freely available feels like a blessing. These new crowns all come from our neighbour’s garden. We originally split our crown to give some to Jack who lived next door so he too had a ready supply to enjoy and share with his family. His crown really took off (becoming about 2 metres in diameter) and ours did not do so well. When Jack sadly died and the house was sold we asked if we could split his crown again in order to keep the rhubarb going. Hence a number of crowns now dotted around our garden that we are enjoying looking after.
The weekend included our second visit to a yarn show in Newcastle. It is lovely to return to a familiar setting, and to talk with returning customers as well as to meet new people. If you’ve followed this blog for a while you will know I love the conversations that arrive from being in such a setting, and there were many during the days we were there. Here’s a comment I am delighted to set down because it was an instant response that came about after I had read a poem out loud – who’d have thought such things could happen just like that in the yarn world – “It’s like a real one. It’s deep.” That’s a great critique of a poem heard for the first time, and it made my heart sing.
Here's to conversations, impromptu poetry reading, growing good things and to enjoying fruits when they are in season. I now can’t resist sharing my loganberry poem. This poem was first published by Feral A Journal of Poetry and Art in 2024, and it is one of those prose poems that I simply loved writing because it flowed and seemed to want to take its place on the page in front of my very eyes!
WIKIPEDIA SAYS THE LOGANBERRY WAS ACCIDENTALLY CREATED IN 1881 IN SANTA CRUZ, BY THE AMERICAN JUDGE AND HORTICULTURIST JAMES HARVEY LOGAN
But I tell you that Logan had a paintbrush from a magic colouring book. The kind where the pictures come alive when you brush them with water. Where the dinosaurs are speckled grey and you can just use that one brush and there they are in colour – slightly faded I’ll grant you, but that’s the payoff for not having the mess of paints. I say he bought one of those thinking it would bring back happy memories of his childhood, but that once it was in his hand, he had a different idea. How in his garden he had the perfect long-fruited raspberry. How his fingertips held the memories of berries yielding to his gentle pull, leaving their white cones behind. That he headed out of his back door with that yellow, plastic-handled brush, and walked whistling to the hedgerow where the wild blackberries grew. That he smiled as he tickled the pollen from the flowers. That when he looked at those huge berries on the brambles, he was imagining the combination he could make. How he was predicting the exact depth of colour in his head when he transferred those yellow speckles from the rough-ended bristles to the starred stigmas of his raspberries. I tell you he hurried because he imagined that if he didn’t, a bee might do it first. You say, But it couldn’t have been a plastic-handled brush in 1881.
Comments
Post a Comment