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| The Last Raspberry. The BEST One? |
With the end of summer rapidly approaching it does not take much imagination to recognize that if you don't have some garden harvesting in motion and berries picked by now, it may soon be too late. Every fruit has it's season and all that....
Raspberries are a good case in point, and although one may still find some late, tiny wild raspberries in secluded areas shaded from the intense summer sun in the bush, the neat, orderly rows of raspberries in the garden are pretty much finished producing for the year, like it or not.
After harvesting 8 or 10 gallons of raspberries, maybe more, it seems to me the "pick " was clearly finished. For the last couple of weeks there have been a miscellaneous "few here and there types " , not really enough to bother with a container or do an official "pick", but certainly enough for the casual garden-visitor to pause happily and enjoy the sweet fruit---Until today, that is.
Today there was only one raspberry in sight. The last one. I poked around looking under leaves, tenderly moving aside those drying, scratchy old plants that have given their all to produce that final flurry of fruit. I gently push aside the new, green, very tall, stately plants that will produce the fruit next season, making sure they are not damaged. Raspberries DO that. Grow the first year and produce the second year. AT least some types do. The June-bearing "Red ones" like mine do--I can explain that sometime, but I digress; it's hard not to be distracted in the bright August sunshine. See how tall the new plants are? Oh, right, let's not digress.
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| Much taller new growth raspberry plants will be next year's producers |
Back to business, at Incoming Bytes we like to ask the most difficult of questions and from time to time must necessarily wander into alternative fields of interest like insurrection, how to do stuff, and timeless, strange but true philosophical quandarys.
Such is this question: Why does the last raspberry of the year always taste so much better than the first gazillion? Is the last raspberry the Best one? I vote yes.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
It's like the Lorax finding the last Trufula fruit. Except you know these will be back next year! Fantastic photo of the berry!
ReplyDeleteI don't like raspberries... Sorry ;[
ReplyDeleteApplying your theory to... say... blackberries, blueberries, or even cherries - which are not berries but rhyme well - Then I would have to agree that the last lingering fruit, if picked at its peak, and especially when grown at home, is likely the best! :}
The last berry is the best because it’s the one that becomes idealized in the mind until next season. Then, it’s like walking into a classroom you haven’t entered since you were 7 years old. You realize that everything is not as you remembered – that you’re perspective has changed. The chairs look ridiculously small now, and the water from the hallway fountain doesn’t taste the same. In the same way, that first berry of the new season doesn’t taste as sweet as the last one from the previous season.
ReplyDeleteI’m reading a memoir called, “Little Princes”. In it, the author, Conor Grennan, who is a volunteer and also the founder of an orphanage in Nepal, decides against bringing back an apple for one of his favored orphans. Eventually he goes on a search through remote areas of Nepal for some of the orphans’ parents, after he realizes these kids are not really orphans after all, but trafficked children.
So this one little guy has a vivid recollection – a recollection he savors – of what a fresh apple from the village of his birth tastes like. He desperately wants Conor to bring back one of these apples, like the ones from his memory that he so cherishes. However, Conor in the end decides against it, because he realizes that the memory of the apple, and all of those delicious emotions attached to that memory, and which were such a comfort to the boy, might die if he was to bite into the reality of one.
Anyway, maybe I am way off the mark here, but oh how I love to ramble with musings. ;-)
Anyway, Raymond, I enjoyed your post!
Rachel :-)
RACHEL, A FELLOW RAMBLER, oops, caps on, raspberries are such fragile fruit, with volatile perfume and delightful acidity...i prefer the black ones, next the gold, but climate limits the range..so, lovely side trip by your gardens, mine is finally producing, waiting for next year to really settle..asparagus wild strays, and fat rose hips plants, all sorts of adoptees should find their new roots by spring..i'll be sure to cover with warm compost, fall is predicted to be long and warmer..
ReplyDeleteThe last one the best? But of course! It has to hold us over until next year's first one pops up, after all.
ReplyDeleteTo me this last raspberry is more of a metaphor, considering recent events but I am not going to digress! ;-) In short, it is like trying to savor a good memory because you know there will be hard times ahead.
ReplyDelete