Blackberries. When you hear the word, what is your first thought? If you are a techie, you may think of one of those portable computer/communicator things that so many now use. If you are older or a non-techie, you may recall the delicious sweetness of blackberry pie or jam. If you live in an area where blackberries actually grow, you may have different thoughts.
When I was a kid, my brothers and I would pick blackberries at the edges of our property, and our mom would bake a pie. Homemade blackberry pie is still my favorite, and I make it every summer. I make blackberry jam, too, and cobbler, and sometimes syrup. You see, blackberries grow well on our two acres. In fact, they grow too well.
The Himalayan blackberry is the plant equivalent of the house sparrow—a non-native species that has moved in and taken over. Blackberries are quite good at taking over. The ones on our property grow in masses reaching well over my head and stretching out in all directions. Overall, they must cover at least half an acre. My husband and I wage a perennial war against them. He likes to hack them down with a weed whacker (the non-power kind), pushing them out of the path and back from the garden. I, on the other hand, prefer poison.
Organic gardener that I am, I abandon all such principles when it comes to blackberries. I haul out the sprayer and fill it with Round-up or Crossbow, depending upon the season. Lugging it from front yard to back yard to garden edges, I cover the blackberry leaves with mist. The ones I can reach, that is. Then I watch over the next few days as the plants slowly turn brown and die. It is quite effective. If I had time, I might actually conquer the beast. However, I also must spend time cooking, cleaning, sleeping, and earning a living. And while my back is turned, the plant strikes back.
A few days away, busy with other things, and I return to see blackberry vines snaking out across the lawn and into the garden. New shoots push into the path, ready to trip the unwary. Much to my embarrassment, they have launched an attack on the neighbors’ yards as well, exposing my failure like a naughty child throwing a public tantrum. The realization sinks in: this will not be the year I conquer the blackberries.
However, hope springs eternal, no matter what the season. There is always next year. Next year I will keep the blackberries in line. I will stay ahead of the weeds in the garden. I will keep the house clean and get my office in order. Maybe I will even sell that children’s book I have revised so many times. I don’t know what I would do without the hope that next year provides.
Sparrow Thoughts 
Please note blackberries in photo for previous article.
Blackberry jam and pie are still my favorites too. This year I picked a couple of 32 oz fastfood cups of blackberries -obviously an impromptu impulse as each time I was wearin shorts.
Enjoyed your remarks…
Steve (Y.)
Thanks for your comments and encouragement! True, shorts are not the best for picking blackberries.
When I was a boy we would spend most of January holidays on the south coast. There were many blackberry thickets around. We kids would get sheets of corrugated iron and drop them into the blackberry thickets. Then we would walk in and pick bucketfuls of blackberries. We came home all scratchd and purple. Grandma and the aunties would make pies and jam. Today councils spray blackberries as a pest, so you can’t eat them.
Blackberries helped me become an ecologist. In my first year at Macquarie University we were standing on top of a large open field. The professor asked what we thought would happen there. The university was new, built on the site of old dairy farms and market gardens. All the students had just read Eugene Odum on old field succession in Ohio. We naturally answered with principles from that article. The prof then said, if you hadn’t read Odum what would you say will happen. I said the creek at the bottom would become a blackberry thicket. You could already see a few canes sprouting down there.
That was the moment I realised that being a scientist was not about repeating answers found in books, but was about seeing the world as it really was in front of my face. The blackberries helped move me from being a high school student to being a university student. In a few years I was working in the School of Biology there. I ended up in charge of the animal house, so got to work with a lot of animals about which not a lot was known. You couldn’t just look it up in books.
I know a secret place at the bottom of a gully at the back of a park in Fairfield where blackberries grow. The council does not go down there to spray them. One day I’m going to try making blackberry wine.
That’s a neat story, Ken. Sounds like you have some great memories associated with blackberries. Interesting about field succession. We have watched that take place on our property over the past 30 years. Much of it had been used to grow nursery stock, most of which was sold off by the previous owners, leaving an empty field on part of the property, with an older woods below. We watched the alders grow, followed by ferns, maples, Indian plum, and other plants from the lower woods that gradually moved up into the new woods. However, we also had the blackberries which moved in, complicating the process. It is an interesting process.
Good luck with that blackberry wine!