This year seems to be an excellent year for the blackberries and I have been as busy as ever making batch after batch of jam for future gifts for friends and family. The wild patch outside our backyard has produced enough for over three batches already!
Recently my family and I took a little hike around where we live and harvested a bucketful of everyone’s favorite summer treat. We stopped for a bit by the river’s edge to skip rocks and take in the beautiful scenery. In the below picture the plant in the front of the photo is a huge bramble of Himalayan Blackberry.
The path we were on was flanked on both sides by this invasive beast.
No one enjoys the wild berry picking as much as my daughter! We have dubbed her our little bear cub as she will stand there and eat and eat those yummy berries. Somehow she knows to pick the perfectly ripe ones too!
I went a little crazy snapping picture after picture of the berries as they just seemed so photogenic! This next photo looks staged but I promise it was not. My husband called me over and pointed out how this berry was resting so perfectly right in the middle of a Queen Anne’s Lace flower.
As we started to head home I quickly snapped this candid shot of my two boys walking way ahead of us. Candid shots are always my favorite and I think this photo shows why.
After returning home, I was able to take a picture of our bucket of berries before it was turned into yet another dessert.
For more information on this very invasive, if not yummy, blackberry you can a pay visit the following helpful links.
- Oregon Department of Agriculture- information on this noxious weed
- pdf file with some really good information from OSU
Beautiful day in pictures! I agree, it’s the candids that always take the cake. I have a love/hate thing with the Himalayan berry bushes – they are just so strong and forceful. )Thanks for introducing them here, Luther Burbank… groan…) The little native blackberries are so demure by contrast. Our Himalayan blackberries in the neighborhood are just, just starting to turn color. Have been hard and green for so long! I think it will turn out a bumper crop like you are having. Your blog is really nice. Great pictures! Love the berry resting in the flower blossom, a real princess berry on her featherbed!
Your photos are lovely and look at the size of those berries! They grow wild here in Nova Scotia as well, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them as thick as they are there. Yum!
Hi Cynthia~~ Hubby and I were on a hike yesterday. He is the most patient of men, standing there waiting for me as I gobbled berry after sweet juicy berry…with admittedly a few sour ones to make the sweet ones taste even sweeter. [If that makes sense.] The photos of your family and property are wonderful. I’m curious as to what part of Oregon you live in.
Someone was asking about a cool zone blackberry, and I’m sure this must be it! They sure look like a great plant to have, if you can tame it.
Such beautiful pictures of your day.
~Faith
Oh, I just stopped by your ArtFire shop. I just learned to knit last year. And I DO mean KNIT! No other stitch, just one single knit stitch. LOL
One of my friends has recently gone all agog over spinning her own yarn. She can sit there for hours and do it.
Maybe this winter I shall add another stitch to my repertoire!
~Faith
Hi Faith,
Once you learn how to purl you will be amazed at the kind of knitting you can do! Knitting really just boils down to two basic stitches. It’s easy, I promise! And incredibly addictive!
When I was first knitting I thought there were only two stitches, but then I started hearing there were more.
I had a knitting party here last winter and everyone is looking forward to more this coming indoor season. I don’t know much, but several knitters who do come as well as those who want to knit (even some young men) and those who just want an excuse to visit. LOL
What’s great about it, is those long winter eves when there is no work outdoors to be done, so it’s a great reason to sit and get something done while relaxing.
That almost makes me wish for a blackberry patch in my back year. Almost. My raspberries are invasive enough.
The area you live in is gorgeous, with or without the blackberries. But they do look yummy!
I love blackberry jam. We used to walk to the closest blackberry patch and pick enough to make jam and cobblers. I always know when they’ll be ripe around here, it’s usually the week before school starts. That means I better get the girls and go picking now.
You took great pictures, they really are photogenic.
When I lived in Eugene we would go down by the river and pick blackberries like crazy (avoiding the huge spider webs). I wonder if they were the same variety. They sure were great tasting.
Thanks for all the nice comments everyone!
It always amazes me just how invasive this particular blackberry is. I feel almost guilty letting some grow along the back end of our yard. My daughter absolutely loves to go out there and gobble them up and the birds use the bramble as their home. Still, I look at what a beast it is and how much it is choking out our natives and I feel like a bad gardener for allowing some of it to stay. My husband is ready to yank it all out as he is sick, sick, sick of pruning it back each year to prevent it from taking over the whole neighborhood. Sometimes it feels like the more we prune it back the more it spreads! The canes and leaves supposedly make a good dye for wool and I plan on experimenting with them here soon. We certainly have enough to go around!