Fragments From Floyd

This is a form of raspberry called wineberry. They grow wild along the roadsides between home and town, and this time of year, their ruby fruits bedazzle the hurried traveler like so many gemstones hanging on long arching canes. I've rarely seen them harvested, but from their name alone, you know they have a history of usefulness.

For our first years here, we contented ourselves with picking a batch or two from the thicket of wineberries that grow on what we thought was no-man's land down the road until our son found out that the place is on the property of a neighbor who discovered Nate stuffing his mouth with the soft red berries a few summers ago. No harm done, come back any time, he said. But Ann wanted berries without trespassing, so we dug up a few from another nearby spot and transplanted them just behind the house. This is the first year we've harvested berries, and they're kinda fun to pick.

Like other raspberries, the fruit pulls easily away from the fleshy receptacle (that comes with the fruit in blackberries)--you can see where one berry is missing on the bottom cluster, only the whitish receptacle persists. The vines are covered in fine bristles, but they lack the prick of blackberry canes. When you're done picking, you don't look like you were in a cat fight and lost.

Their flavor is mild, not at all like black raspberry, but mixed with other fruit of the season, or by themselves as I'll have them on my cereal here directly, they make a nice addition to a summer's wild harvest. And so far, the bears have left them alone. And when we pick them, we put the dog inside so he can't see that THESE berries are good to eat, even when they're RED!