Brambles - Part Two

I love blackberries! The taste, the smell, the colour, I love everything about them. They are my favourite fruit, and for me they represent this wonderful time of year when late summer blends into early autumn. Their taste is almost a fragrance, and when they are cooked that perfume wafts itself around the whole house, evoking mellow days, woodland walks and hedgerow harvests. They remind me of childhood blackberry-picking, braving the thorns and spiders' webs to reach the largest fruit which always seem to be just that little bit too high and out of reach.

These are wild ones, growing on Dartmoor a couple of weeks ago. They are small and delicious, and very prickly. You definitely need to wear long sleeves when gathering them.

They look so pretty growing over this granite stone wall.

I'm always very inspired by blackberries to make things. A while ago I made this version of Lucy's crocheted bag in bramble coloured cotton yarn - lots of purple, crimson, mauve and green. I wanted to reflect the colours of the unripe berries as well as the ripe ones, and love the richness of the tones.

I use it every September, and although it's hard to see in this photo, I lined it with a purple polka dot cotton.

I also made a little coaster from some lovely hand knit cotton in these colours.

Last year I made this cotton granny square cushion cover from some very soft cotton yarn, inspired by the rich colours of cooked blackberries mixed with cream, after making a blackberry crumble. 

It sits on this Ikea chair which I decided to paint in a chalky lilac at the same time of year. I adore those soft, warm colours together which take me instantly back to early autumn days.

These are our cultivated garden blackberries, and they are huge in comparison with their wild cousins.

It's nice to pop out to the garden after work to pick them and either freeze them or put them in the fridge for topping the next day's cereal.

Folklore has it that blackberries must be picked before Old Michaelmas Day on the 10th October, and not after because the devil was kicked out of heaven on this day and fell into a bramble bush, cursing it and spitting on it. There is logic behind this, as after this date the fruit can be high in tannins and taste bitter, and the damper weather can mean that the fruit is more likely to become mouldy.

I used these to make ice cream, and the colour turned out to be almost identical to the damson ice cream I made last week. It had a lovely, subtle flavour.

I also like to see blackberries around the house. My daughters bought me a lovely Susie Watson mug with a blackberry design for my birthday a while ago. It's the one I use when I'm having a leisurely weekend breakfast, and I really like its simplicity.

I also love the brambles which are printed onto this little plate. It's part of a set of Brambly Hedge plates given to me by my mum, as she and I are both fans of the books with their gorgeous pictures and sweet stories. The fruit and leaves are painted in great detail, capturing the forms and colours beautifully.

The deep, rich, autumnal colours inspired me to make a necklace with these ceramic beads. They so remind me of shiny berries 'fat with blue-red juices' as Sylvia Plath described them in her poem 'Blackberrying'.

Well, that's the end of my bramble post, and I haven't even mentioned apple and blackberry pies or bramble jam! Well, there's still time for some more blackberry cooking before the season is over. Think I'll have to wander down the lanes again with my basket for some more.

Brambles - Part One

My all-time favourite fruit is the blackberry, or bramble, and already the fruits are beginning to ripen, albeit a few weeks early. In September I usually use them to make pies, crumbles, purees and jams, and I'll make a post about that later. But for now I want to rewind a bit and take a look at the flowers. Brambles grow along the sides of roads, lanes and railway lines and on waste land as well, and as a result they tend to get a bit ignored, but this year I've been noticing just how attractive and varied the flowers are.

Looking at the flowers in close up they are amazingly pretty. A soft pinky-mauve, the petals look as if they're made from crumpled silk.

There are lots of stamens, very much like the centre of a rose (they are a member of  the rose family), and the sumptuously wrinkled petals remind me of faded vintage fabrics. 

We have in our garden a thornless, cultivated variety, and its flowers are very different with seven elongated white petals.

Even bramble stems are attractive. The thorns are very sharp, as anyone who's tried to reach into a bramble bush to pick the berries will confirm, but the stem is covered in a soft down and is a soft shade of pink.

Last week when we were at the river I was very happy to find this lovely bramble bush with flowers which were a deep shade of purple. The purple is a pre-taste of the berries themselves, and I like it very much .

I looked more closely at the flowers.

There are masses of stamens, and the centre is already beginning to form into a little blackberry before the petals fall.

I can't wait for the blackberry season to get going, and am so looking forward to the smell of blackberries cooking in my kitchen.