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Organic raspberries ! My veggie patch would certainly not keep us in hard times as I do not always tend it as I should. My neighbour has an immaculate one and I am lucky to receive broad beans, lettuces and other offerings in season.  In the corner by the fence he has a netted section for the raspberries.  His seem to ripen before mine and the canes are ordered, you can get between them to pick the fruit.  The birds sit on his fence and eye them through the netting.

Mine run wild against the fence under the wattle tree and there is no netting. It is a challenge to get in amongst them and I emerge with sticky weed seeds all over me.  Today I fought my way through the broad bean plants and picked the last of their pods. Then there was a jungle of potato plants which I certainly did not plant! I pulled a few and tiny little pink potatoes appeared. Good for salads but I am not sure that they would qualify as quality pink eyes, the brand which gardeners in Tasmania feel justly proud.

But,  I am proud. When I got into the raspberry canes, which are growing rampant and spreading up the hill to the wooden bench under the Banksia Rose, the canes were bent over with the most luscious quantity of fruit. Within no time I had filled the metal bowl I carried.  Back in the house I weighed it – 1.200 kg.  And this is the second picking. Four days ago, I picked some  that were accessible from the lawn, at a guess there would have been 800 g that day and there will be more.

These let-wild raspberry plants remind me of  Scotland where the raspberries grow wild in the hedgerows. In late summer cars are stopped  at the side of the country roads and the occupants can be seen bent over as the put the berries in buckets.  I remember the little balsa wood punnets of my childhood, filling them in the garden, where the raspberries grew in neat lines.  My brother-in-law’s dog Whisky, a black and white spaniel had a passion for raspberries. I once saw her between the canes her head cocked up and a raspberry just disappearing into her mouth beneath her black nose.  The whole action was very delicate and there was a gently sucking noise as the berry vanished.

Late summer two years ago I walked with my brother and sister to the loch which sits in the hills above the land which our father once farmed in the borders in Scotland. We scattered Mother’s ashes at the far end of the loch, where there are the old ditches from an ancient fort. The view there is superb. These people knew where to live with a strategic view.  Was it Picts Scotts or Romans or earlier Hunters and Gatherers who first enjoyed this view?  As we walked up the road to the loch and back again, there were masses of raspberries red and yellow, this was our walk refreshment and nothing could have been better.

It is remarkable that a bowl of raspberries can prompt so many ramblings in the mind.

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