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edenfallingStar Island is on my mind tonight. Therefore, have 325 words on raspberries.
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Raspberry Red
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I remember picking raspberries on the island.
I don't anymore, not since I turned allergic and my sister and I left home. It's not half as fun when you can't casually eat every fifth or sixth berry and go home with seeds in your teeth and the tart-sweet flavor of raspberries coating your tongue and throat. And if you can't eat what you pick, you need to set out on purpose with a bucket and long pants and maybe gloves, to shove your way through the poison ivy that tangles the same sun-soaked clearings that raspberries love.
But when I was younger, my mom, my sister and I would grab buckets and baskets and head northwest to the old burn scar facing Lake Windigo, on the edge of the Taylors' land, and spend an hour slowly climbing the slope hunting half-hidden flashes of red.
Wild raspberries aren't like store-bought ones. They're smaller -- much, much smaller -- half the size at best. You learn to judge the ripeness, looking for a red that verges on magenta, even purple. You close your fingers gently around the berry and tug, just a breath of pressure. If the berry is ripe, it will start to slide free of the white core. If it resists, you can try again if the color's right, but it's just as well to leave it.
The bushes need some fruit to fall and sprout and spread. The birds need food to eat. And there are always other bushes another few steps onward.
It would be tedious if it were a job -- mind-numbing, back-breaking. But on the island, it's no chore: it's a gift, a quest, an afternoon cut free of everything but you and the sun and the wind and your hand darting in among the leaves and thorns in search of treasure.
I remember picking raspberries on the island.
Maybe next year I'll pull my mother down to the burn scar and start again.
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Inspired by the 8/15/10![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
15_minute_ficlets word #43: pucker
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Every word of that is true, incidentally. Also, we didn't mean for berrying to be a female thing, but my dad is violently allergic to poison ivy and therefore almost never came with us.
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Raspberry Red
---------------------------------------------
I remember picking raspberries on the island.
I don't anymore, not since I turned allergic and my sister and I left home. It's not half as fun when you can't casually eat every fifth or sixth berry and go home with seeds in your teeth and the tart-sweet flavor of raspberries coating your tongue and throat. And if you can't eat what you pick, you need to set out on purpose with a bucket and long pants and maybe gloves, to shove your way through the poison ivy that tangles the same sun-soaked clearings that raspberries love.
But when I was younger, my mom, my sister and I would grab buckets and baskets and head northwest to the old burn scar facing Lake Windigo, on the edge of the Taylors' land, and spend an hour slowly climbing the slope hunting half-hidden flashes of red.
Wild raspberries aren't like store-bought ones. They're smaller -- much, much smaller -- half the size at best. You learn to judge the ripeness, looking for a red that verges on magenta, even purple. You close your fingers gently around the berry and tug, just a breath of pressure. If the berry is ripe, it will start to slide free of the white core. If it resists, you can try again if the color's right, but it's just as well to leave it.
The bushes need some fruit to fall and sprout and spread. The birds need food to eat. And there are always other bushes another few steps onward.
It would be tedious if it were a job -- mind-numbing, back-breaking. But on the island, it's no chore: it's a gift, a quest, an afternoon cut free of everything but you and the sun and the wind and your hand darting in among the leaves and thorns in search of treasure.
I remember picking raspberries on the island.
Maybe next year I'll pull my mother down to the burn scar and start again.
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Inspired by the 8/15/10
15_minute_ficlets word #43: pucker---------------------------------------------
Every word of that is true, incidentally. Also, we didn't mean for berrying to be a female thing, but my dad is violently allergic to poison ivy and therefore almost never came with us.
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Date: 2010-08-18 10:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 07:10 pm (UTC)