Jackpot!

Last night I picked the first of this season’s black raspberries, which are possibly my favorite berry. I didn’t get a lot in this first picking, just a heaping half-cup or so. This year’s crop will be an improvement over last year when I barely got enough for a few servings. It’s not, however, going to be large enough for me to freeze any, I’m afraid.

It will likely be the weekend before the next batch is ripe enough to pick. The good news about this season’s crop is that the berries currently appear to have a wide variation in their level of ripeness. I saw everything from black to red to just barely pink to hardly formed. I’m hoping that means I will get to enjoy them over a wider length of time than is typical.

Dog enjoys them too, but since they are my favorite berry, I don’t let him have many. One time two or three years ago I was picking berries with Dog in tow. He saw me pick one and pop it into my mouth. He immediately did the same thing, pulling a berry off a lower stem with his teeth, leaving the leaves and stem intact. I was floored. Who would ever think that even a very smart dog like Dog would immediately decide that my picking and eating a berry would result in his attempt to do the same thing the first time he saw it? And do it so carefully without damaging the rest of the plant? And in the third place, who would ever think that a dog would like black raspberries? Another reason I keep him from picking raspberries is that he makes little differentiation between ripe and unripe berries. He may be smart but his palate isn’t well developed.