Blackberries four

Yesterday saw the first serious blackberry pick of the season, a two handed affair at Hook Road Arena. We came across a really good spot, just to the right as you go in the main entrance, and must have done close to a gallon in well under an hour. The fastest picking that I recall. BH presently at packing stations.

The scene to the left as you go in, where the blackberry bushes are well on the way to being strangled by convolvulus.

The picking ground to the right, snapped here after we had taken out the low hanging fruit. One only had to have a care down below, where some of the berries carried a bloom from the dust, presumably raised by the car boot traffic on Sundays.

The reward came in two parts. First, a rare foray to the excellent fish and chip shop - Kingfish - at Horton Retail. Best fried cod I have had for a while. While we waited - fish being cooked to order - I was able to inspect the money plant for signs of phyllotaxis.

The verdict was that the leaves came in whorls of two, rotating 90° at each step up the stem. A simple system, only slightly complicated by the occasional error in execution.

Second, another water melon from the international convenience store next to the dentist in Waterloo Road. Probably quite close to the 5kg weight limit for the shopping bag in question. But I got home OK, browsing on a couple of patches of blackberries on the way. Just the thing on a hot afternoon, much better than tepid water.

The damaged label on the melon said 'agrofrut', for which Bing turned up references 2 and 3. Reference 2 a Columbian company doing the wrong sort of stuff. While reference 3, a Greek company, looks right. Maybe not across the Atlantic, but still quite a long way to be moving naturally packaged water!

On the way, pleased to find that chain saw action in the vicinity of the large pine tree at the end of our road had not resulted in serious damage. Indeed, I was hard put to see what had been done. 

Perhaps they had just taken out some of the lower branches killed off by one of the recent hot, dry summers. Most of the real action must have involved some other tree or trees.

PS: in the margins I read of the support being given to Kamala Harris by someone with work-name Megan Thee Stallion. I dare say it all helps and the stallion will go down well with young voters, but without knowing anything at all about her, I have always found rapping a rather violent business, with an unsettling amount of anger being vented. Or at the very least simulated, which is almost as bad.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/blackberries-three.html.

Reference 2: https://www.agrofrut.com/en/about-us/.

Reference 3: https://www.agrofrut.gr/en/. 'Agrofrut Hellas Vassilis Pantazis S.A is the biggest Greek company in exporting watermelons. We export yearly 50.000 tons of watermelons to most European countries. / We deal with all shapes, sizes and varieties of watermelon available to us; from round to long and from mini to large'.