The Magic of Blackcaps

Every mid-summer when I was a kid, my dad would say, "You wanna go pick some blackcaps?" Blackcaps, I didn't know then, were black raspberries, and picking blackcaps with my dad, pails in hand, is one of my fondest childhood memories. I don't remember where we found them, he seemed to have some secret blackcap spot. What I do remember was hanging out with my father, getting scratched up by thorns, and arriving home with pails full of fruit. My mother was not so enthusiastic. Upon our return she would demand I sit with her and look at each and every berry before later processing into pies or jam or freezing. We were looking for worms. Apparently my mom had a bad blackcap experience once, worm-wise.

In any case, when I moved into my current house I discovered a small blackcap bush in the back yard. I was delighted and nursed the little bush through several summers until it managed to produce maybe 15 berries, which I picked and gulped down, never having enough to do anything other than sprinkling a few on my cereal. Not long after moving in I hired a local fellow, just a kid then, named Riley Webster who has a magic gardening thumb and was willing to spend hours in my overgrown yard pulling weeds and planting flowers. One day during his first week of work I went outside and, horrified, saw that he'd yanked my little blackcap bush out of the ground and thrown it onto a pile of brambles. Poor Riley, I screamed and demanded he replant it (I'm surprised he didn't quit on the spot). "But...but...it's a weed!" he told me. "Not in this yard, it's not!" I announced. Bless his heart, he was determined to convince me the blackcap bush was garbage growth, but replant he did.

Nature is such a strange thing. The little blackcap bush keeled over that summer and still today has never really come back right. The berries are puny and awkward-looking. But Nature, in its strangeness, must have known how important blackcaps are to me because now my back yard has become overrun with bushes that are bursting with the black raspberries. They're climbing the fence, they're choking out the peonies, they're wrapping themselves around the rose bush. They've even jumped the fence and are now growing next to the carriage house and opposite the driveway steps. Every morning for the past week I've gone outside and picked a half a quart. My freezer is stuffed with blackcaps and don't ask me what I'm going to do with them all. I gotta say, though, when I walk into my house and dump the berries into the strainer for washing, and then pile them into freezer bags, I am completely elated. I'm thinking about my dad and our foraging. I'm thinking about my mom and her stern finger-wagging about searching for creatures in the little blackcap cup (sorry, Mom, I don't do a worm search these days). I picture the sunny kitchen of my youth and spending special moments with my parents. It's a lovely thing, and rather amazing that a little black berry can transport me so instantaneously to simpler times.

As for Riley, well he isn't working in my yard anymore, though he did work here for several summers after what we've come to call "The Blackcap Incident." He's in college and is working elsewhere this summer, no doubt making more money, though he stops by now and then and can't help but pull a weed when he sees one...a real weed. We haven't talked much about the berry bush overgrowth, though he knows they're there. And I don't say the word "blackcap" to him. I'm afraid his memories won't be quite so fond as mine. Maybe I'll make him a blackcap pie this Christmas as a peace offering.

Spring...Almost

I spent part of this morning drinking coffee in my family room and watching birds. I have a little birdhouse in my back yard that I can see through the window, and for 30 lovely minutes I sat quiet and watched Mama Bird (I assume it was the mother but I guess it might have been the father, I don't know much about my feathered neighbors) fly back and forth, bringing straw to make a nest. I attached the birdhouse to a fencepost a few years ago and this is the first time I've seen any kind of bird nest there, which made me happy. I have bird friends in Tennessee who are Purple Martin experts...and I kind of hope they aren't reading this because the busy bird making ready for her chicks is a starling. My Purple Martin friends tell me starlings are bad birds, and Internet research for the most part agrees: they're invasive, territorial, and "compete with, displace, and kill many native birds and their young." I've been hearing this for years because I have another starling family that returns to a nesting spot under the eaves by my kitchen window. I'll be washing dishes in the spring and watch the parents come and go, then I hear peeping, then the babies fledge. I feel a little guilty about providing a nesting place for the starlings, but the alternative -- flushing them out with the hose or rooting for the feral cats to do away with the chicks -- seems too awful. I don't have it in me. I even apologize to every summer fly I swat.

So...I've decided to enjoy the annual show and turn deaf ears to the bird experts. I don't love the starlings, but their arrival means spring is close behind. The temperature in Sherburne today is 36 degrees, not exactly tropical, but the clock is ticking forward and the starlings tell me the pile of snow in my driveway will soon melt and the flowers will push on up through the soil. Then I can drink my morning coffee on the patio and watch Harry spin in the bee balm.

We had a snowy winter, really lovely, but I'm done. At this point I might welcome a grizzly bear making a nest in my back yard if it meant spring is near. With that said, bring it on, starlings. 

Let it Snow

The snow has finally stopped (I think). It's been snowing for three or four days, and before that, back in December, we got three feet, so the view has been white through my window for more than a month. There is a certain kind of fortitude in people who live in the Northeast, and specifically in Central New York. We're used to snow, and are accustomed to bundling up in coats and hats and gloves and scarves and boots so we can march out there and take on whatever the weather has doled out. I wake up every morning to the sound of snowplows, and when I burrow back down under the electric blanket I say a silent 'thank you' to those hardy souls who get up before dawn to clear the roads for the rest of us.

People who live in southern climates are always posting photos of sunset beaches and green golf courses to torture (they think) those of us who live in the north. My Florida friends say "It was 75 today!" and my Memphis pals talk about taking walks -- in light jackets -- by the river. Another friend, this one in Arkansas, was griping about the temperature being in the high 30s one day last week. I felt like telling her, "When your 15-pound dog goes sliding off the back porch into a snowbank and disappears, then you can complain."

Yes indeed, there are days when I would like nothing better than to see some grass or sand and be able to go outside in a tee shirt. Still, there is something really special about this white world. There is a silence that's hard to explain if you haven't experienced it, a hush that falls over the town that makes me take a deep breath and be thankful. Snow is magic, crystalizing on every twig and sprinkling the houses with sugar. When I get up in the middle of the night and look out at snow falling, glistening in the streetlights and sparkling on my neighbors' roofs, there's a purity of nature that words can't quite express.

So today I thought, for all my southern friends, I'd post some photos of February in this part of the world.